In late 2014, Paris (FR) Mayor Anne Hidalgo set out to deliver on her ambition to turn the city into a more collaborative one, where residents play an active role in the ideas and decisions which shape its future.
The first step was to introduce a participatory budgeting programme. In 2014, over 40,000 people voted on 15 proposals put forward by the City Council. In the second year, the residents of Paris suggested over 5,000 ideas and more than 67,000 people voted. In 2016, the City has decided to reserve a proportion exclusively for the most deprived areas of the city.
Another proportion was reserved for spending on youth and education projects, with schools being encouraged to participate and children's votes determining how that money is spent. Those children in turn may have educated and encouraged their families to take part. In October 2016, over 158,000 people voted in the latest round, a 39% increase on 2015, deciding how to spend 100 million euros.

The Participatory Budget asks people to come up with solutions to problems in their community, on which they are the experts and in which they are highly invested. The nature of the process gives ample opportunity for the plurality of voices to be heard, while also encouraging collaboration and consensus building among participants with similar agendas, and finally giving everyone the opportunity to vote for those ideas which matter most to them. 5% of the capital budget of the city is dedicated to participatory budgeting. Thus the practice means transferring to citizens the design and selection of projects representing a public investment of 100 million euros a year. Projects submitted by citizens have to be feasible and have to meet three criteria: they have to be about capital, have to be related to cities’ competencies and they have to fall under general interest. In Paris, we have 21 PBs: 1 PB per district for local projects, 1 PB for the entire city for major or replicable projects, one PB for schools and one for social housing. Lastly, the Paris Participatory Budget is a year-long process with four main steps. Firstly we stimulate ideas and projects and collect them on our digital platform. Secondly civil servants study the feasibility and evaluate the cost for each project. If a project is not feasible, the sponsor of the project receives a personal answer visible on the online platform. The third stage is the campaign and the vote. Finally the city implements the selected projects.

The Paris Participatory Budget contributes to sustainable urban living since it is a major call from inhabitants. This learning is clear when observing the projects they submit and the ones they choose during the vote. As an example, there were eight winning projects on the Parisian scale in 2015: one project devoted to bicycle lane development (8 million euros), one project targeting a pedestrian friendly city (8 million euros), one project focusing on the reinvestment of our green belt (old railway line) for 7.5 million euros, one project that aims at fighting poverty (4.4 million euros), two projects on green spaces, including rooftops and urban agriculture (4.3 million euros), one project to develop drinking water fountains in Paris (2 million euros) and a 1 million euro project dedicated to cleaning improvement of the city.

The Paris Participatory Budget is based on an integrated and participative approach: the policy is inherently participative and coordinated by the head of the City. It involves all departments in feasibility studies and implementation. Innovative digital tools have been developed to support cross-sectoral cooperation and a dedicated team is facilitating these cooperative ways of working. Also it is based on cooperation between districts and central city offices as a way to articulate global and local scales.

In the initial 2014 pilot over 41,000 votes were cast in total. Nine projects were selected. The 2015 iteration represented a significant expansion of the initiative. Over 5,000 ideas were proposed, of which 3,000 passed the initial basic criteria. In the final stage 67,000 votes (+/- 3 per cent of the population) were cast and 188 projects accepted. In 2016, participation rose with 158,964 people voting on a final selection of 219 ideas, from an initial 3,158 proposals. The number of participants was boosted by just over 66,000 children who took part in a special ballot to allocate €10 million reserved for projects in schools and colleges. Budgeting process is also delivering tangible outcomes: more than a quarter of 416 winning projects have been delivered such as new public gardens, co-working spaces, renovated schools, pedestrian areas, sport facilities, etc. This has brought new ways of working inside the city’s offices based on more cooperation and new kind of relationship between civil servants and citizens. Finally, the Participatory Budget is also a support for public innovation: the project named “shelters for homeless” has received 21000 votes in 2016, which is the highest number of votes among projects. It is a call for the City to find innovative ways to fight poverty and welcome migrants.

We are regularly invited to present Participatory Budget by other cities: since December 2016, we have been travelling to conferences hosted by the cities of Kyoto and Mexico. Delegates from Glasgow and Tallinn came to Paris and we were invited to go to Edinburgh to present our findings to parliamentarians and local authorities. Also, Paris has been awarded Pilot City by the Open Government Platform last December, as a result of its participatory budget. We see these many invitations to present what we have learned, factors for success and ongoing challenges. We believe it shows other European (and worldwide) cities’ willingness to implement their own Participatory Budget.

Taking into consideration the diversity of its citizens and the diferent social and ethinical minorities on its territory, Agueda (PT) developed a partcipative budget process. It amounts to 500 000 € of the Agueda's yearly public spending. The process runs across all the activities of the  Municipality, embedded in the administrative modernisation and bottom-up approach. So far, it permitted Agueda ranking 3rd in the Municipal Transparency Index and 2nd in the Smart City Index. Since 2015, when the initative was launched, 601 projects were submitted, more than 80 000 people voted and 30 projects selected. 

The PB-Águeda is in its third edition, revealing itself as a process covering the local government’s entire range of activity. The PB Committee (CAT) is made up of all the heads of Divisions and separate Technical Units, and a member of the Municipal Assembly, under the coordination of the mayor. Each edition of PB-Águeda comprises two cycles, with a duration of one year: the cycle of budget definition and the cycle of budget execution. The propositions received (from the Internet or participatory sessions) are scanned and entered in the computer application. This process can be done at home by the proponent, using the web services available (site or APP-based). However, we intend this process to be educational with continuous improvement, therefore meetings are held with the proponents to discuss their proposals and weekly CAT meetings take place. We use a methodology of “action-reflection-action”. The satisfaction was evaluated using a questionnaire, submitted to the participants in the Participatory and Voting Sessions. It is important to highlight that the reflection made by both elected officials and technical staff is based on the canvassing of the population. The propositions not admitted, in both plenary meetings and final voting, become part of a “Bank of Ideas” which feeds a selection or recovery of 5 ideas while drafting the yearly Plan and Budget, either because of their municipal interest or because the number of votes was too close to that of the winning propositions.

“Being Smart” is the challenge of the new millennium. People are at the core of everything: technology meets the needs of citizens and they get the habit of easily accessing many things. We want people to feel that they live in a human, inclusive, socially, technologically and economically active city, but also that they can follow and engage with the local administration by submitting proposals, which are prioritised and voted upon in order to identify the investments that need to be included in the yearly Plan and Budget. The emerging path of Águeda as a “Human Smart City” means that the local authority provides a set of technological solutions, allowing an exact knowledge of the requests. Citizens can check the online dashboard of the local budget and follow the meeting of the Municipal Assembly through ÁguedaTV, with chat for comments. Águeda is thus a smart city, and it has the ability to develop, create and respond to the needs of its citizens. it is important for them to feel that they are an integral part of the city. An assessment of the impacts of the two years of PB-Águeda leads us to conclude that citizens are concerned with these topics: the environment, tourism, sports, urbanism and education. It is important to highlight that approximately 80% of the projects were not initially part of the options of the municipal board for 2013-2017.

We collected figures showing the implication of the citizens:

• Propositions presented through the Internet: 21 (2015) and 12 (2016);
• Participatory sessions: 11 (2015) and 11 (2016);
• Propositions in the participatory sessions: 276 (2015) and 292 (2016);
• Participants in the participatory sessions: 435 (2015) and 495 (2016);
• Winning projects after voting: 17 (2015) and 13 (2016);
• Registrations in the Participatory Platform: 3,048 (2015) and 5,131 (2016);
• Visit by about 24 municipalities and a Scottish delegation to learn about PB-Águeda;
• 12 public presentations on the PB-Águeda methodology in national seminars and workshops, e.g. the Iberoamerican Summit of Participatory Democracy; • PB-Águeda was surveyed by the Secretary of State of Administrative Modernisation for input on the methodology of the National PB.

The implementation of PB-Águeda was accompanied by a sociological study, which allowed us to know the reality of the municipality, at the level of:

• The profile of participants, thereby allowing us to have a knowledge of the habits of participation in terms of age, gender, level of education and involvement in the associative movement;
• The profile of the population (we have been confronted with a Roma community of a significant size who didn’t know how to read and write, a reality that was unknown in the indicators of the national census);
• Skills in information and communication technologies;
• Knowledge of the real needs of the population, even those not fitting the regulations of PB-Águeda, made it possible to include them immediately in other support programmes from the local authority;
• The process of PB-Águeda is worked across all the municipal services, which implies that all employees have the same degree of knowledge in the implementation and execution of projects;
• The theorisation of the practice of the processes of participatory budgeting, based on the local experience and the action of benchmarking with 7 national experiences, where the same evaluation criteria are applied. It is important to highlight that PB-Águeda was awarded the prize for Best Participative Practice in the context of the award of the Network of Participative Municipalities (RAP) with an international judges panel.

PB-Águeda assumes itself as a good practice whose replication would benefit other European cities. The mixed model (both online and face-to-face interactions) and the methodology for the consensus tables, with the support of a team of 47 moderators (employees of the municipality, who voluntarily work for the project after working hours), make this participatory budget process inclusive to people in terms of writing skills, digital literacy, accessibility to the participatory sessions, as well as to the conciliation of family life with the exercise of active citizenship. In the last edition, we found that 68% of the people in the sessions were participating for the first time, which means that the process is attracting more and more new participants. The experience of the PB-Águeda can be replicated in areas of low population density, given the mutual trust and closeness that has been established with the citizens throughout the process. The implementation of this process in other municipalities would have to be rooted in a participatory budget model that would reflect the institutional identity and policies followed by the elected Municipal Board.

With an electoral abstention rate of over 60%, Cascais (PT) faces a distance problem between its citizens, policies and politicians. In response, the municipality introduced a participatory budget mechanism in 2011 to bring citizens closer to decision-makers. It is a low-cost, legally binding methodology, with two cycles (decision and implementation), involving citizens from the presentation and discussion of ideas, through to the project's opening. Cascais’s participatory budget is accessible to all, promoting social inclusion, gender equality, and integration of all social groups. It is a pioneering model of public administration. Cascais, which has a population of 206 000, has used the participatory budget model for six years, involving more than 150 000 citizens, implementing 88 publicly voted projects, and strengthening people's confidence in their governors. The most voted participatory budget of Portugal, it has been replicated in more than 10 cities and has sparked interest across Europe and beyond.

The participatory budget improves service delivery and the power of citizens to make their voices heard in local politics. There is a trust that generates mobilisation. People approach the municipality because of PB and over time as an outcome, they get increasingly involved. People take responsibility for the management and maintenance of all aspects of projects. They deal with problems and find solutions. A smart city is a democratic and participative city designed through collaborative learning. It is a process by all of us, within public participation, and as a combination of participative and representative democracy. PB develops new behaviours in the community, leading it to take an active role defining priorities for the use of available resources, ensuring and enabling everybody’s right to participate in developing their territory. PB is a new way of decision-making and a tool for active participation. So, by practising democracy and cultivating a locally participatory culture an impact on the further development of a democratic union is achieved. PB is the most relevant project that Cascais has to promote public participation. The PB was born of the need to strengthen civil society by modernising public services and combating corruption. Our guidelines are accountability, active citizenship, participation, transparency, and the management of resources according to people’s real needs, rather than the self-interest of departments.

The sustainable development of a city involves four fundamental axes: environmental, social, economic and cultural. In the social axis, participation emerges as a need for people’s interaction in strengthening democracy. PB emerged in the 80s in Brazil as a way to bring poor and excluded citizens into prioritizing their problems and finding solutions. Our strategy has 5 axes: • Territory with quality of urban life; • Territory of creativity, knowledge and innovation; • Territory of environmental values; • Coherent and inclusive territory; • Territory of active citizenship: promoting proximity and active citizenship through participatory democracy, thus fostering a spirit of community and promoting voluntarism and social responsibility. In 2011, a new team was born in the municipality, and the PB was based on Local Agenda (A21). A Letter of Principles was prepared for PB promoting informed participation to bring citizens closer to decision-makers and contribute to administrative modernisation and the fostering of a dynamic civil society. These objectives structured a deliberative PB in which participants could submit proposals and decide projects within a stipulated budget. In 2013, the Division of Citizenship and Participation was created, which included A21, volunteering, cultural associations, residents’ associations and the PB. With this division, local government was committed to promote governance, to increase the participation of the citizens in the management of the territory.

Compared to other municipalities, Cascais stands out for its representativeness. Our PB highlights are: high voter rate, amount of investment, participants number in public sessions, voting model, follow-up work by the first dimension is the one in which are more indicators. The number of votes is only one of them. PB is deliberative and emerges as a decision-making power based on and by people so citizens have a continuous interaction in the whole process, which is the key element of our participation concept: • Communication (bms) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfH2U2Ws184 • Public Sessions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sppl0M34dq8 • Technical analysis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHidvE7EG10 • Voting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Kg6qaMgzt8 • Implementation of the projects www.cascaisparticipa.pt On the financial side, Cascais had the highest percentage of budget invested in PB (18% in 2015). In the last dimension, Cascais has the highest implementation rate in the country with total transparency during the process, due to high-quality technical analysis and multitask team. Cascais PB is innovative in establishing new interactions between citizens, public administration and politics, projects’ proponents, work executed percentage, and an exclusive PB team. There are three dimensions of analysis: participatory, financial and implementation that compose a diverse set of quantitative and qualitative indicators.

The Cascais PB in its six editions had a strong impact on the territory. This impact was in participation: Total votes (6 years) 219,307; Sum of participants in public sessions 4,389. Transparency impact: people can control and monitor what is happening with their projects/works at www.cascaisparticipa.pt. Administrative modernisation impact: multitask teams were created, a dedicated team, available directly via mail, phone and face to face and ongoing bottom up evaluation; Most participated session 210; Total proposals (9 sessions x 6 years) 975; Total proposals in plenary (9 sessions x 6 years) 628; Total proposals/ technical analysis (9 sessions x 6 years) 289; Total projects submitted to voting (6 years) 196; Total works (after voting) 88. The implementation rate had the following impacts: The sum of investment in works during six years was 15.8 million euros. The 88 projects had the following results: PB 2011: 12 projects/ 12 fulfilled; PB 2012: 15 projects/ 14 fulfilled; PB 2013: 6 projects/ 5 fulfilled; PB 2014: 9 projects/ 8 fulfilled; PB 2015: 21 projects/ 6 fulfilled; PB 2016: 24 projects/ 0 fulfilled. Many of the projects had an impact in education (25). The others concerned urban rehabilitation (12 projects), green spaces (11), sport (10), the public road network (10), security and civil protection (7), culture (6), social action (5), environmental protection and energy (1) and innovation and knowledge (1).

Our PB has been recognised as an example of good practice and has been used by other cities on the national and international levels. Many other cities have reproduced our PB model, including in Portugal: Alenquer, Águeda, Caminha, Funchal (Madeira Island) Lagoa, Lousã, Mafra, Torres Vedras, Penacova, Penafiel, Portimão, Ponta Delgada (S. Miguel island, Azores). Many cities in Europe have sent representatives to study our PB practice: Brussels, Stockholm, Dubrovnik, Ríčany (Czech Republic). Worldwide: Maputo, Quelimane and Nampula (Mozambique), Manágua (Nicaragua) and New York City (USA). In order to promote a bigger interaction, several municipalities and Cascais created a national participative network called RAP (Rede de Autarquias Participativas). Lex Paulson, an organiser of Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, visited our PB and said: “What impressed us most in Cascais was that they used Participatory Budgeting to build trust and participation, not just for a year, but for many years. There are many participatory budget processes that fluctuate and do not last for more than two or three years. What Cascais has done over the past five years has been to show that we can always improve and create more and more confidence by showing the impact and the results, so that the citizens are more and more committed, dedicated and motivated.”