Good data is being used to make better participatory budgeting (PB). In Greensboro, they’ve used the previous cycle’s data to set goals and to figure out where to direct outreach to maximize participation – particularly of underrepresented populations. Research from the New York PB Research Board and the Community Development Project at the Urban Justice…

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In 2014, the City of Paris started the world’s largest participatory budget (PB). It began as a test-run a few months after Mayor Anne Hidalgo was elected – citizens could vote on how to spend €20 million on 15 possible projects identified by the city. A few months later they began a full-scale PB, with…

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Thea Crum is the Director of the Neighborhoods Initiative at the Great Cities Institute, University of Illinois at Chicago, and has handled research and evaluation for participatory budgeting (PB) in Chicago, including at Sullivan High School. Michael Menser is a Professor at Brooklyn College, CUNY, and helped bring PB to NYC and his college, and…

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Social justice was a goal and a value of the original experiments with participatory budgeting in Brazil. The early pioneers in participatory budgeting saw it as a tool to redirect money towards sections of society that were often left out of public spending. Giovanni Allegretti, researcher at the Center for Social studies of Coimbra University…

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Participatory budgeting is one of the fastest growing democratic innovations in North America today. It brings elected officials and civil servants together with their communities to take public dollars and put them toward projects that residents chose. Since this is not the business-as-usual way that governments budget their money, what do elected officials actually think…

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