designing for democracy

definition of a fruitful participatory system in Monza

Designing for democracy

Alberto Casati 765501Supervisor: Professor Anna Meroni

Academic year 2011/2012

POLITECNICO DI MILANOScuola del Design

Product Service System Design

A mia zia Rosanna



Alberto Casati 765501Supervisor: Professor Anna Meroni

Academic year 2011/2012

POLITECNICO DI MILANOScuola del Design

Product Service System Design

Abstract (italiano)

Questo mio elaborato di tesi nasce dalla volontà di sperimentare quali strumenti in-novativi un designer di prodotto-servizio possa fornire alla politica. Sono sempre stato affascinato dalla politi-ca e, considerando il particolare momento storico che stiamo vivendo caratterizzato da una grande disaffezione nei confronti delle Pubbliche Amministrazioni, ho cer-cato di dare una risposta progettuale per la definizione di un nuovo strumento partecipato che possa essere adottato a livello locale. In particolare mi sono con-centrato sulla città di Monza, città da cui provengo e nella quale ho constatato in prima persona durante le ultime elezioni il desiderio di partecipazione da parte dei cittadini. Inoltre le nuove tecnologie stan-no cambiando radicalmente la comunica-zione e la politica; noi designer dovremmo contribuire in maniera attiva allo sviluppo di nuovi strumenti di partecipazione poli-tica, evitando così che la disaffezione ge-neri pessimismo e favorendo invece una volontà di riscatto.Ora è il momento di dare forma alla parte-

cipazione dei cittadini, con strumenti ben progettati e che diano effettivamente voce ai cittadini nel processo di co-governo del-la città, riducendo la distanza tra loro e la politica.Nelle nostre città sta sempre più sce-mando il senso di comunità che invece dovrebbe essere riscoperto. La mia risposta progettuale parte dalla ne-cessità di creare un nuovo sistema parte-cipato nel quale amministratori e cittadini lavorino assieme e assieme si prendano cura del bene comune, condividendo le scelte e le priorità sulle quali concentrarsi. Strumenti online e offline devono integrar-si tra loro, sfruttando al meglio le loro po-tenzialità per portare alla creazione di una nuova concezione della politica. Il progetto che ho sviluppato parte dalle analisi di casi studio e tecniche partecipa-tive esistenti per delineare uno scenario in cui la partecipazione politica farà appas-sionare i cittadini alla gestione della loro città.

Abstract (english)

My thesis work comes from the desire to experiment which kind of innovative tools a product-service designer could bring to politics.I’ve always been fascinated by politics and, considering the particular historical moment in which we live characterized by a great disaffection with public administra-tions, I tried to give a design response for the definition of a new participatory tool that can be adopted at local level. In particular I focused on the city of Mon-za, the city where I come from and where I saw personally during the last elections the desire for participation expressed by citizens. In addition to this, new technolo-gies are radically changing communica-tion and policy, and designers should con-tribute actively to the development of new tools for political participation, preventing that the alienation would turn into pessi-mism but favoring instead a desire for re-demption.Now is the time to give form to public par-ticipation, with well-designed tools that can give voice to citizens in the decision-

making processes of the city, reducing the distance between them and politicians.In our cities the sense of community is in-creasingly diminishing but we should try to rediscover it.My project comes from the need to cre-ate a new participatory system in which administrators and citizens work together, and together take care of the common good, sharing the deliberations and the priorities to work on. Online and offline tools must be integrated with each other considering all their potential for the crea-tion of a new conception of politics. The project that I developed starts with the analysis of exisiting case studies and participatory techniques and generates a scenario in which political participation will fire citizens in the management of their city.

Tuttifrutti

Contents

What is democracy?Types of democracy Case study: Democracy in Athens Case study: LiquidfeedbacksWhat is participation?Levels of participationPhases and variables of participation:Communication Case study: Obama’s victoryConsultation Case study: YougovDeliberation Consensus building approach and open space technology Case study: Requalification foundry ModenaCo-governance Case study: Assemblies in history Case study: Porto Alegre Case study: Switzerland and referendum

BackgroundResearch questionsMethodology

Introduction

1 Democracy and participation

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Tuttifrutti

The role of design Think Public: Usnow Case study: Ebbsfleet UnitedDesign a democracy and for a democracy Case study: We the people Case study: Everyblock and Meetup Case study: Le fabbriche di Nichi Case study: Decoro Urbano - Comunichiamo Case study: Impossible living Case study: Darsena Pioniera Case study: Copia e incolla x MilanoThe power of the web Case study: Kickstarter, Thepoint, SellabandConclusions

2 Design and democracy

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IntroductionCity of MonzaLocal elections 2012 Project for Monza Case study: Cantieri delle ideeCommunication in MonzaParticipation in Monza PGT Case study: Monzapartecipa, Viale LombardiaSystem in MonzaSWOT analysis

3 Monza and participation

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From SWOT to design briefThe new system in MonzaTuttifruttiCommunicationConsultation Board-game meetingDeliberationCo-governanceOnline and offlineSystem Map

4 Project

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The choice of the subjectHistory of the AutodromeThe high speed ring nowPrototyping online phasePrototyping offline phase

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6 Conclusions

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BibliographyIndex pictures - diagrams

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“If politicians don’t represent anymore the will of the voters, let’s change these blessed voters”.

Corrado Guzzanti

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Introduction


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Background Introduction

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Who is Sarah Mason?

She is the girl whose face (it would be more correct to say whose eyes) appears on the cover of the magazine Time as the person of the year 2011.But on that cover there isn’t her name: she is just a symbol that represents millions of people around the world.In 2006 the same magazine dedicated the cover of the year to everyone with a pecu-liar “YOU” written next to a computer. The subtitle back then was “you control the in-formation age”. Since 2006 many things changed regarding the possibility of the web and the way people are communicat-ing. We are in fact in the age of the infor-mation and now it is much more difficult to control people: the Arab spring is the most evident example and it is reported by many theorist as the turning point.

Sarah Mason is the face that best repre-sents the wish of a revolution of the sys-tem. With that covered face she repre-sents millions of people that didn’t have

voice and that now start showing that they exist . She represents the Americans that protested against the finance in Wall street, she represents the Spanish “indi-gnados”, she represents the north Africans that reacted against the dictatorships.More in general she represents the world and a youth that doesn’t believe anymore in this politics but that dreams a different future.

These spontaneous movements are spreading everywhere and they are changing the way of considering politics: from the Pirate party in Germany till Mo-vimento Cinque Stelle in Italy.The participation of the citizens and the use of new technologies are now essen-tial elements of our democracy and they will change political structures that lasted for many (maybe too many) decays.

I think it is time for citizens and especially for designers, to design a new participa-tory democracy, making the system less obsolete.

Research questions Designing for democracy

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The main objective of my thesis is to ana-lyse how participatory democracy works in order to design a new participatory sys-tem that helps citizens to have more voice in the decision-making processes.

The main research questions that I want to answer in my thesis are:

1 • How to integrate citizens’ needs of participation with the existing repre-sentative system?This question is answered by defining the different democratic systems and by pre-senting some case studies.

2 • How the web and the new technolo-gies could help for increasing partici-pation and spreading a major sense of community?This question is answered by presenting some case studies showing the potential of the web in creating communities.

3 • How to make participation systema-tic, appealing and continuous?

This question is answered by the project itself and by making a prototype.

4 • Which could be the role of the de-signer in the definition of a new partici-patory system?This question is answered by presenting and analyzing some case studies of social design.

5 • Which are the criterias for the selec-tion of the participatory techniques?This question is answered by defining thedifferent stages of participation and the main variables that characterize the vari-ous participatory techniques.

My analysis will then focus on a municipal level, in particular I developed my project for the city of Monza and I tried to investi-gate the opportunities that this city offers for the definition of a new participatory system.

Methodology Introduction

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My thesis is based on a design process that includes the main four design activi-ties: analysing, generating, developing and prototyping.

• Analyzing: The information I collected come from interviews I made to Adminis-trators and employees of the Municipality of Monza. In addition to this I analyzed many case studies.

• Generating: The phase of ideation start-ed considering the design briefing that I defined after my analysis, sketching ideas.

• Developing: During the phase of de-veloping I used some tools such as the blueprint and the realization of the system map that helped me to visualize the con-nections between the different actors in-volved in the process.

• Prototyping: In this phase I created a faspe and a work-shop for prototyping the participatory sys-tem I designed.

In this chapter I start from the two key words of my thesis: democracy and par-ticipation. I present the different shapes that society gave to democracy and how this changed over time.I will then concentrate on participatory de-mocracy and I will define the main steps for an effective participation, analysing dif-ferent stages and different tools that can help the reapproaching of the electorate to their representatives.

Chapter 1

Democracy and participation

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The word democracy comes from Greek δημοκρατία (dēmokratía) and literally means “rule of the people” coming from the words δῆμος (dêmos) “people” and κράτος (kratos) “power”. Democracy means that the power is in the hands of everyone and, considering that power is generating laws, this means that laws are decided by the people and there is not higher authority than them.If laws are written by people, there should be some methods for them to interact, dis-cuss and decide. The first democratic method was used in Greece in the V° century B.C. with the public assembly Ecclesia (page 29).Public assemblies have some fundamen-tal principles such as: equality, right to speak, and the power of the majority. At the same time, public assemblies have some limitations: infact they work well just in small communities and there is no se-cret-voting. With the pass of the centuries, democracy changed many times methods and tools. During the 19th Century the representa-

tive democracy started spreading all over the world and nowadays that is conside-red the only kind of democracy that exists.

As I will show in the next pages, democra-cy is a concept that can assume different forms and these forms usually change when there is political disaffection. This disengagement started already in the 70’s because of a discrepancy between politics and society and this disangage-ment is now more and more evident and it will bring to a redefinition of the demo-cratic tools.

In order to re-design the tools for a more modern democracy, I will briefly present the 4 main types of democracy:

• Representative democracy.• Direct democracy. • Participatory democracy. • Liquid democracy.

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1.1 What is democracy

ple and difficultly they are a real mirror of the society, representating all the inte-rests. Like Gianfranco Pasquino states in his book “La classe politica” (1999):

“The fact that the majority of the political class never had a previous occupation, and never experimented different activi-ties out of politics, makes politicians not able to understand the real conditions of the life of their fellow citizens.”

It is called direct democracy because the final decision is taken directly by citizens and not anymore by their representatives. In order to arrive to a direct democracy, it is necessary to develope good tools, be-cause if well designed they can involve people but if badly designed they can ge-nerate frustration. The tools of direct democracy are present in some democratic Countries. Referen-dum is the most common tool used to have a direct democracy.

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1.2 Types of democracy

Representative democracy is a form of de-mocracy in which citizens are represented by elected people in all the governmental processes.Representative democracy is the most common type of democracy and it is op-posed to the direct one.It is usually used when the number of citi-zens is too big, in order to make the deci-sion-making processes easier and faster. At the same time, this kind of democracy presents also some problems: it happens that citizens don’t feel represented by their representatives that instead are thought to enjoy many privileges. Many situations of corruption, conflict of interests and political patronage, di-creased the trust of citizens in this form of democracy.Like shown by Robert Michels in the book Political Parties (2001), representative politics can easily turn into an oligarchic system: members of a party infact are sharing the power just with few other peo-

Representative democracy

Direct democracy


The Athenian one can be considered the first example of direct democracy in his-tory: the power infact was in the hands of citizens that through assemblies were tak-ing decisions on all the important issues of the City (page 29).Imagining a democracy that is using just direct tools is nowadays utopia; Switzer-land is a good example of how direct de-mocracy can be merged together with the representative one (page 74).Some criticisms to this type of direct sys-tem are linked to the incompetence of the citizens of evaluating difficult issues, the lack of responsability with the approval of the most convenient solutions, the dan-ger of demagogues and the threat for mi-norities. Other criticisms are linked to the costs and the time that these tools require.At the same time Switzerland is a good example that controverts these criticisms proving the validity of direct democracy.

Participatory democracy is a process that claims the need of new forms of citizens’ participation. It has a different approach compared to representative democracy that instead doesn’t consider these forms.The main idea of participation, is to broad-

en the number of people that are contribu-ting to the decision-making processes.There are different types of participatory democracy such as consensus democ-racy, deliberative democracy, grassroots democracy but all of them are focusing of increasing participation. The tools and the depth of the process are then creating these little differences. Direct democracy (like the Swiss one) could be considered part of participatory democracy .

Like professor Gilsborg claims, participa-tory democracy is a good way to make representative democracy and direct de-mocracy coexisting: it is infact a middle way between the Athenian Ecclesia and the modern representative system.Nowadays participation starts to be a com-mon word and participatory processes are presented like important resources. Despite this, in Italy there are just few examples of real effective participatory forms: in the majority of the cases they are fake involvements and, if participatory democracy is perceived as useless by citizens, people don’t trust anymore these forms and tools. It is important to give shape to participatory processes and it is crucial to communicate them well, creat-ing a felling of community.

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Participatory democracy

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Much information should be shared be-fore taking a decision and new technolo-gies can help for this purpose.

Liquid democracy is also called delega-tive democracy. Like the name says, vot-ing power is not given to representatives but to delegates. It is a kind of democracy that is covering the gap between representative and direct democracy. It supports infact the idea that a sort of representation is necessary but at the same time there should be a more direct choice of the representatives, crea-ting closer relationships between people. Differently from representative democra-cy, there is not a fixed number of elected but everyone can be part of the system and can be delegated by others.Each citizen can choose infact to be ac-tive or passive in the system, being a delegated or giving the delegation of vote to somebody else that is thought to have a bigger competence on a specific issue.Bryan Ford presents the 6 core principles of liquid democracy:

• Choice of role (individual or delegate).• Low barrier to participation (it is easy and

Liquid democracy

and cheap to be a delegate).• Delegated authority (delegates exercise power).• Privacy of individuals (all votes are pri-vate).• Accountability of delegates (all decisions made by delegates are public).• Specialization by re-delegation (delgates can not only act directly but they can re-delegate).

The two case studies that I present in the next pages are basically the first and the most recent example of democracy: the Athenian direct one and the liquid one.


Greek democracy is the first example of a democratic government in history.The main features were:

• Power was held by people.• All citizens were equal.• Govern was held in turns.

It was a direct democracy, and every citi-zen could propose and vote laws directly.

Athenian democracy was uficially born in 470 B.C. and this system has been used for more than two centuries. All citizens could take part to all the dif-ferent public assemblies: Ecclesia, the council of 500 (Boule) and the courts. Vot-ing system was ruled by showing hands and in few cases with a secret voting. Some critics to the Athenian democracy are that many people were excluded from

Democracy in Athens

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case study


Democracy in Athens case study

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the right to vote: women, slaves and fo-reigners. These limitations are anyway understandable considering the society of that time.Herodotus in his book “Histories” de-scribes one important feature of the Athe-nian democracy: the isonomy (“equality of low”). This included:

• The commissions were selected by lot starting from a list of all the Athenian male citizens. The only exception was for the election on the military chief who was cho-sen yearly by citizens. Every year around the 2% of citizens was drawn to partici-pate in the democratic life.• Creation of a report : At the end of the mandate, every elected person had to present a report of his actions that would have been then checked by some citizens chosen by lot.• The final decision was taken by the peo-ple. Ecclesia was the most democratic meeting: all the Athenian male citizens could participate (around 30000). For important issues there was a quo-rum of 6000 people. Also the courts were formed by citizens and for the most diffi-cult issues, the court was composed by the Ecclesia itself.

Another interesting innovative element of the Athenian democracy was the ostra-cism that was a procedure in which an Atenian citizen, chosen by people, could have been expelled for 10 years. This tool was avoiding the risk of tyranny.

Democracy in Athens ended with the con-quest by Alexander the Great in the third century BC.


Liquidfeedback is the most famous soft-ware based on liquid democracy. The use of web is crucial for liquid demo-cracy and this software is free and has al-ready been tested by the Pirate party in Germany. The first version was created in 2010 and it is available just in German language. The main feature of liquidfeed-back is the delegated voting system: it is infact possible to choose one member of the system and delegate him/her during the voting phase. Every member can start initiatives: they are simple proposals that can be voted by others. The members of the system have then the possibility to support the initia-tives, to create a different one, or to sug-gest little changes in the proposal.Each proposal needs to reach a quorum before starting the discussion phase (usu-ally 1%). The time schedule is flexible and can be personalized.During the discussion session, members can support the initiative. If they want to suggest little changes, they can write some suggestions to the owner of the

initiative. These suggestions can be sup-ported as well and, according to the ap-proval they receive, they can bring to some little improvements to the initial ini-tiative. If some members instead disagree with the initiative, they can create a new

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Liquidfeedbacks case study

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one, competing with the others. During the phase of discussion, it is pos-sible to support the initiatives with a sup-porting vote that anyway doesn’t have any final consequence. When the time for the discussion is over, just the initiatives that got many approvals pass to the voting phase. Here the previous appreciations are deleted and a new voting is starting. The voting session uses the Shulze meth-od so there are some calculations to find out the best possible solution. There is a quorum also in this phase that can be per-sonalized according to the issue.The innovative feature of liquidfeedbacks

is that during the voting phase, it is pos-sible to choose if to vote personally or to delegate a trusted person that is thought to be more competent. It is possible to delegate always the same person or to change according to the issue to vote.The diagram at page 31 shows the dele-gative voting method: each member of the system can be delegated but can at the same time delegate someone else.

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The scholar Benjamin Constant in 1919 defines two different conceptions of free-dom: the freedom of the ancients (ie the direct model) and the modern freedom (ie the representative model).Participatory democracy is halfway be-tween these two models: the representa-tive one and the Athenian one.When we have complex systems, it is easier to delegate because of the com-plexity of administering a policy directly. Direct democracy is the alternative to rep-resentative democracy: they can be con-sidered as the black and the white and when Constant was writing his theories in the early 20th century, there were no shades of gray.If we consider participatory democracy in the middle between these two extremes, we can determine various shades of par-ticipation depending on which extreme is the closest one.Participatory democracy in fact is not an alternative to these two models but it is an integration that can coexist with the exist-ing democracy.

With some participatory tools it is possi-ble to involve more people in the decision-making process without revolutionizing the political system, which provides that the final decision lies with the elected rep-resentatives.Administrators usually don’t like to share power and there are many examples of participatory processes that didn’t really have any influence for the final decision, making the participatory system useless and not trustable.The reasons why administrators usually refuse participatory systems are many such as:

• Ideological rejection.• Refusal motivated by the lack of efficien-cy and speed of the process.• Refusal motivated by the lack of skills of the participants.

According to some studies (ISTAT 2009) made in Italy, there is a sort of passivity around participatory politics. 40% of wom-en, 47% of youth and 54% of elderly peo-

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1.3 What is participation

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ple never speak about politics. Just the 5% of population can really be de-fined as active and there is a link between the the lack of information and the dis-tance from politics: people infact perceive politics like something very complex.Like well described by Daniela Ciaffi (2011):

“There is an uneasy relationship between representative democracy that is long-es-tablished but with no more credibility and some new forms of participation that are desirable but poorly tested.”

In the late 60’s the discussion about the different levels of participation started with Sherry Arnstein who represented these levels with a ladder made by 8 steps (page 35).


Sherry Arnstein created a “ladder of par-ticipation”, showing all the intermediate steps between level 0 of participation (Ma-nipulation) and the total participation (Citi-zen control).For Arnstein, participation means giving power to those citizens that are normally excluded from politic and economic pro-cesses.The 8 steps of participation that she de-fined can be grouped in 3 main categories:

• Non participationFor Arnstein this category doesn’t repre-sent the total lack of participation, but is a sort of fake participation that has beencreated by politicians in order to manipu-late the opinions of the citizens (manipula-tion) or to create a group therapy more than a real constructive involvement (therapy).

• TokenismLike the word says it is a kind of token par-ticipation in which there is little considera-

1.4 Levels of participation

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tion for the contents that are coming out during the participatory process.The communication is often one-way (in-forming), the consultation is never into a real participatory project (consultation) and the last step is the “placation”, mean-ing the capacity of just keeping people calm with some compromises.


Ladder of participationCITIZENS CONTROL

DELEGATED POWER

PARTNERSHIP

PLACATION

CONSULTATION

INFORMING

THERAPY

MANIPULATION

CITIZEN POWER

TOKENISM

NON PARTICIPATION

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• Citizen powerJust in the last three steps of the ladder we can speak of real participation. The first step is the one in which citizens have a partnership with the holders of the power, having the possibility to negotiate the alternatives.“Delegated power” and “citizen control” are the last two steps of participation and they represent the full delegation of the power. The main difference of the last two steps consists in who is taking the final decision; if the last word is the one of the citizens we have a complete participatory process. The last step is for example the choice of the Municipality of Cleveland (Ohio) to create a board of normal citizens with the responsibility to choose how to invest some money for the economic re-qualification of one ghetto of the city.

South Lanarkshire Council developed a different model: “the wheel of participa-tion”.The wheel is divided in 4 key phases: • Information,• Consultation, • Participation, • Empowerment.

This model focuses more on the main phases of participation rather than on the different levels of participation.Each of these phases is then showing 3 stages of interaction, from the minimal one till the one considered the most inclusive.

These two models use a different repre-sentation: the first one uses a ladder, the second a wheel. In my opinion the ladder reminds quite much a pyramid-shaped structure, in which the power given to citi-zens is getting higher while reaching the top of the pyramid.I find interesting to note that this kind of representation is the same that is used to describe the representative politics, so

Wheel of participation


maybe this is a kind of contradiction. It gives this idea that each step of the ladder is better than the lower one but I personal-ly don’t think in this way. I also don’t think we should focus on the different levels of participation but we should determine the key phases of participation and then de-cide which tools are the most reasonable for each phase.

The wheel-shaped structure is more fa-miliar to a designer. The good thing of this representation is that the phases are clearly defined and the focus is more on the process rather than on the single steps. It has a wider vision and the circu-lar shape gives the possibility to continue the process till the result is not considered good for all the different actors involved.

The model I created is more similar to the “wheel of participation”, although I would like to represent the 4 phases I defined with a “ matryoshka structure”. Using this representation, it is clear that each phase relies on the ones it is con-tained in. Even if preferable, it is not ne-cessary to arrive till the last phase when the participatory process starts.

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Participation is a process that requires time and people should get used to it, so it is possible to start with the first phase and, little by little, arrive till the last one.

The 4 key-phases I defined are:

• Communication • Consultation • Deliberation • Co-governance


Matryoshka of participation

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I prefer to use this word rather than infor-mation because informing is a one-way process, communicating is a two-ways process. This is the most important phase because if this one doesn’t work well, the process can’t take place and the other phases wouldn’t even start.At the same time, communication is the phase that should be always present at any stage of the process. Infact it is also crucial to communicate the outcomes be-cause if this doesn’t happen, the trust of people will decrease.It is important to define the target of the communication and also the level of com-plexity of what is going to be communi-cated. Like Daniela Ciaffi (2011) writes, the tools and the styles of the communication are crucial to determine the more or less par-ticipative nature of the process.Communication must be multitarget and continuous in time.

Consultation is the activity dealing with the demands of the citizens and how to check the public opinion. It is fundamental to collect and interpre-tate ideas, opinions, actions with simple but effective tools. These tools should be applied correctly and without misun-derstandings, defining a clear target and involving all the people or categories that could be interested. The tools could go from a simple survey (if there is the need to have a wide perspec-tive) to more dynamic tools such as blogs, forum or more specific interviews (if the need is to have a longer or more qualita-tive process).The results should then be contextualized and there should be a final report of the opinions of the citizens. Consultation shouldn’t investigate just the main needs or suggestions of citizens but, like Marianella Scalvi (2011) says, it is im-portant also to investigate the latent ques-tions, especially the ones of those people

1.5 Phases and variables of participation

Communication Consultation


of participationwho hardly would be involved (homeless, prostitutes…).

It is very important to create different tools in order to get all the categories of people involved. Participatory democracy must be for everyone and for this reason the tools must be different in order to reach everyone.

The aim of participatory politics is to in-volve people into an active and open pro-cess. While consultation is an individual or quite restrictive activity, deliberation is a phase in which many people with different back-grounds, educations, experiences come together to deliberate about one issue. The word “deliberation” has two mean-ings: to discuss and to decide. Stewart Mill in his book “consideration on repre-sentative Government” (1861) states:

“what can be done better by a body than by any individual is deliberation. When it is necessary, or important, to secure hear-ing and consideration to many conflicting opinions, a deliberative body is indispen-sable”.

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It is the most complicated phase becauseit requires many efforts (time, money, en-ergies) and the outcome is never predic-table. For every discussion it is important to de-cide who are the people to involve, how many they are and how to involve them in order to have the most effective results.The topics of the discussions are various and for this reason the tools and the me-thods that are used should be different, according to the complexity or the priority of the subject.

Some authors define the last phase of participatory process with the word “em-powerment”. According to Rappaport (1981), empower-ment is related to the word power and deals with the investment of legal power or permission to act for some specific purposes. Using the Arnstein’s ladder of participation, we could indentify empower-ment with the last two steps.Like Paul Ginsborg (2008) states:

“A new rhetoric is circulating which stress-es the need for the “empowerment of ordi-nary people”. […]


Deliberation

Co-governance

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Unless participation assumes solid, work-able and constant forms, then all talk about “empowerment” will be little more than hot air”. In my model I would prefer to use the word “co-governance” rather than “empower-ment” for the last phase because I think the best achievement we can get is the possibility for citizens to work together with power-holders. Empowerment can be included inside the co-governance process but for me it shouldn’t be considered as the final phase because delegation of power can be very risky and could represent also a kind of de-responsibility of the establishment. I personally don’t think delegation is the highest achievement we should aim for but we should work for crating a good co-governance.It is then true that empowerment would be “little more than hot air” because right now participation is not solid enough, and for this reason is better to aim for a good co-governance, in which elected and electors are working together.

In these 4 phases we should then consi-der some variables that can influence the choice of suitable tools.I defined 3 couples of variables:

• Age / technology The age of the citizens that should be in-volved and the ability to use digital devi-ces are important to determine the partici-patory tools to choose. Young citizens are more inclined to use digital instruments such as computers, blogs and smart phones while adults and elderly people prefer to use traditional forms of communication.

• Complexity of the issue / involvementThe bigger complexity of the subject re-quires a deeper consultation, narrowing the number of people involved during the phase of deliberation. It is more effec-tive to have less people when the topic is complex, but still it is important that all the points of view are present.

• Cost / time takingThese two variables should be well de-fined in the beginning: it should be clear which is the budget that can be used and

Variables of participation


how long the participatory process could last. Usually these two variables are also connected with the complexity of the topic to deal with: if the subject is complex there is the need to have more accurate consul-tations and a longer phase of deliberation.This of course will affect the costs of the participatory process.

Priority is another important variable that should be considered. The priority of the discussion in fact will af-fect the lenght of the process, the budget that can be spent and the tools for invol-ving people.

41


42

Like said earlier, communication differs from information. Informing means send-ing messages without verifying that the information has been received and under-stood. Comunication is one step further: it means informing plus having care that the messages arrived at destination.

When we are speaking of a participatory process, informing is not enough, but we should consider more effective tools of communication.Comunication is not important just in the beginning but it is a phase that is important during the whole partecipatory process. It is also fundamental at the end of the pro-cess, in order to prove that participation worked well, presenting how it influenced the final decisions.It is crucial that communication is effec-tive considering the target to communi-cate with: children, foreigners and elder-ly people are part of the city as well but usually there aren’t specific tools for them and they are not kept into consideration as much as adults.

In this phase I listed some channels of communication that can be used to deliv-er informations and I represented them in graphs according to the 3 couples of vari-ables that I defined earlier.The first two variables deal with the age of the target and with the level of digitaliza-tion of the channel.From the representation I did (page 43), it is quite clear and also quite obvious that the digital tools are involving more young people while the most traditional and ana-logue tools are involving more adults and older people.The only exception of the digital channels could be considered the web site that has a wider usage: while chat and social net-works are very recent and they are used especially by youth, web-sites are chan-nels that are used by everyone has a computer, involving in this way also adults and older people. In the last decade the number of digital tools and devices has increased exponen-tially, making the communication faster and cheaper.

1.6 Communication Designing for democracy

MAGAZINE

PHONE CALLS

NEWSPAPER

MAIL

TV

PHONE APP

YOUTUBE

EMAIL NEWSLETTER

CHATSOCIAL

NETWORKBLOG

FORUMWEB SITE

MORE TIMESHORT TIME

EXPENSIVE

CHEAP

SMS

PUBLICADVERT

MAGAZINE

PHONE CALLS

NEWSPAPER

MAILPUBLICADVERT

TV

PHONE APPYOUTUBE

EMAIL

NEWSLETTER

SMSCHAT

SOCIALNETWORK

BLOG

FORUM WEB SITE

ELDERLY PEOPLEYOUNG PEOPLE

ANALOGUE

DIGITAL

43


This is evident if we look at the second couple of variables (page 43): the ones considering the expense and the speed of the communication.It is very important to find a merge of digi-tal and analogue channels because, as I will show later, the participatory tools dur-ing the phase of deliberation are mainly analogue. Social networks now are spreading quick-ly and they start being used also by politi-cians, political parties and municipalities. The reason is that they are very cheap and they are fast tools to deliver informa-tions. The problem of social networks like twitter and facebook is that these tools are not designed for these purposes.For this reason they can be used just to communicate basic matters but they can be hardly used for further steps during the participatory process. These social networks can’t be very ac-curate and effective ways of consultation and deliberation, but they can be seen as fast and good tools to involve and commu-nicate political matters to people normally excluded like youth. Anyway, thinking that participatory politics should be based just on these virtual tools is completely wrong because social networks are not suitable to create a real participatory process.

44

Blogs and online forums are better exam-ple of digital participatory tools: they can go deeper into the subject and into the de-liberative phase, but they are less power-ful in the earlier stages involving less peo-ple because they require more time and efforts.

Traditional tools of communication such as mail, newspapers and magazines are the ones mostly used now but they are expensive and less effective than digital tools such as email and blogs. They are still used because people that like to be involved in political matters are usually adults and elderly people and they are more reachable using traditional commu-nication.Analysing the last couple of variables (page 45) we can see that the effective-ness of traditional mail and digital mail or blogs are pretty much similar: they can deliver the message to quite many people and they can deal also with quite complex topics. Of course the target of people that are reached are different: young people don’t normally read newspapers and older people don’t normally read blogs.Blogs and email have the advantage that they are faster to deliver the message and they make people more active, sharing


MAGAZINE

PHONE CALLS

MAIL

TV

PHONE APP

EMAILNEWSLETTER

CHAT

SOCIALNETWORK

BLOG

FORUM

WEB SITE

MANY PEOPLEFEW PEOPLE

COMPLEX ISSUES

EASY ISSUES

SMS

PUBLICADVERT

NEWSPAPER

YOUTUBE

opinions and ideas.The message should be declined in a way that arrives to everyone, and the tools used should be different and designed for all. Communication fails if doesn’t involve all the categories and if, during the pro-cess, it excludes some actors.In some cases the choice of the right tool can be crucial and decisive. A clear example is the victory of Obama in the Presidential election of 2008 (page 46).

45


46

Obama’s victories in the Presidential elec-tions are due in part to the wise use of the web. Andrew Sullivan on “The Sunday Times” wrote an article titled: “Barack Obama is Master of the New Facebook Politics”.The study “The social pulpit” made by Edelman society is comparing the use of media made by Obama and his rival Mc-Cain in 2008 during the presidential elec-tions. This study states that he won:

“converting everyday people into engaged and empowered volunteers, donors and advocates through social networks, e-mail advocacy, text messaging and online vid-eo. The campaign’s proclivity to online ad-vocacy is a major reason for his victory”.

The use of social media and technology was the most important part of his strate-gy. These tools made him closer to people and also gave him the possibility to raise many fundings.He got twice the web site traffic of his op-ponent, 4 times the youtube viewers, 5

times the facebook friends, 10 times the online staff and 23 times the followers on twitter. The website MyBarackObama.com gave the possibility to people to cre-ate connections and to generate support-ing teams for the campaign. This platform was so successful that volunteers cre-ated over 200,000 off line events, writing 400,000 posts and creating 35,000 volun-teers groups.More than $500 milion of the total $639 that Obama raised came from the web and from volunteers.Obama’s campaign wasn’t only searching for votes and money but was creating in-volvement and engagament and this new aspect was the crucial one. Joe Rospars (one of the creators of Obama’s campaign) said:

“When we did our first set of fundraising, our goal was the number of people we wanted giving, not the dollar amount.”

This underlines that their purpose was to pass the word with the web more than

Obama’s victory case study


collecting money because they knew that would have been just a consequence.Empowerment was the key word and in-fact on MyBarackObama.com, people could create a profile and enter in contact with each other, creating events and rais-ing funds.

47


Another interesting inititiative that was then revived for the elections 2012, was “Dinner with Barack”. Making a donation, it was possible infact to win a dinner with Obama, flight included. Compare to other similar initiatives that are normally giving this chance just to doners of high dollar amounts, in this case people were selected randomly.These lucky people were then writing on the web their experience and this inspired many other people to donate.

Obama started a new approach to politcs with a direct communication between can-didates and electors. After his victory the President continued the dialogue with the citizens through the website WhiteHouse.gov collecting opinions and suggestions. WeThePeople is a good service that has been developped with the aim of continu-ing this dialogue (page 89).Also in the presidential elections 2012, Obama proved to be much stronger than the rival on the web, using wisely social networks like twitter and facebook.The photo of him hugging his wife, upload-ed in twitter just after the victory, became the most shared picture in the history of social networks.

PUBLIC INQUIRES

PLANNING FOR REAL

PARTICIPATORYTHEATRE

TALKWORKS

FOCUS GROUP

PARISH MAPS

SOCIALAUDITING

PUBLIC OPINIONSURVEY


ANALOGUE

DIGITAL

OPEN HOUSE PUBLIC MEETINGS

GUIDEDVISUALISATION

STANDING CITIZENS PANEL

ACTIONPLANNING

COMMUNITYAPPRAISAL

CONSULTATIONDOCUMENTS

PETITION

COMMUNITYINDICATORS

EPANELSWEBCHAT

The British politician John Hutton, in the “Code of practise on consultation” states: This Government is committed to effective consultation; consultation which is target-ed at, and easily accessible to, those with a clear interest in the policy in question. Effective consultation brings to light valu-able information which the Government can use to design effective solutions”.

There are many consulting techniques that can be used to collect information and ideas. It is important that this phase comes when the public administration needs some opinions about an issue that is well defined but still without any already planned decision. In fact it is very easy to lose credibility if the information that has been collected is not effecting the final de-cision.

1.7 Consultation

48


MORE TIMESHORT TIME

EXPENSIVE

CHEAP

PUBLIC INQUIRES

PLANNING FOR REAL

TALKWORKS

PARISH MAPS

SOCIALAUDITING


OPEN HOUSE

PUBLIC MEETINGS

GUIDEDVISUALISATION


ACTIONPLANNING

COMMUNITYAPPRAISAL

PETITION

COMMUNITYINDICATORS

EPANELS

WEBCHAT



FOCUS GROUP

49


Consultation shouldn’t be superficial and this phase should consult a significant sample that gives credibility to the infor-mation collected. The techniques that are used at this stage, tend to be more ana-logue than digital (page 48). The reason is that usually the most valuable responses of the consultations are the qualitative and not the quantitative ones and it is easier to get effective and more relevant informa-tion with analogue tools.Like already seen in the phase of commu-nication, it is important to define the age of the target to consult, in order to choose the most suitable tools of consultation.

There are not many digital tools, some of them can be both analogue and digi-tal (petitions, questionnaires, consultation documents, community indicators), but the great majority are just analogue.Techniques of consultation have diffe-rent levels of interactions. Some of them, like questionnaires or consultation docu-ments, don’t have great interaction and for this reason are less effective. Many subjects are infact quite complex and, in order to have a useful consulta-tion, it is better to create a longer process of consultation providing the necessary in-formation to better understand the issue.


COMPLEX ISSUES

EASY ISSUES

PUBLIC INQUIRES

PLANNING FOR REAL

TALKWORKSFOCUS GROUP

PARISH MAPS

SOCIALAUDITING


OPEN HOUSE

PUBLIC MEETINGS

GUIDEDVISUALISATION


ACTIONPLANNING

COMMUNITYAPPRAISAL


PETITION

COMMUNITYINDICATORS

EPANELS

WEBCHAT


Usually more than one technique is used simultaneously to avoid misunderstan-dings and in order to collect the opinions of all the categories of interested people.During the participatory process, it is important to define the timetable: usu-ally good consultations are taking some weeks and they can end with a final public meeting.Some of the tools such as participatory theatre, planning for real or guided visuali-sation are more informal techniques and they can involve younger people.The main difference between this phase of consultation and the next one (delibera-

50

tion) is that here people are sharing opin-ions and ideas but they don’t finalize any precise and common decision.Consultation is important for public ad-ministrations to get the points of view of citizens. Not necessarily the deliberation phase is required if, after the phase of consultation, the opinions of the citizens are unambiguous and shared also by the power-holders.Some of the tools such as public inquire and social auditing are usually dealing with complex issues and for this reason they can’t involve too many people during the process. Contrarily, public opinion sur-


veys, community indicators and standing citizens panel can involve more people but on easier issues. In the middle there are different kinds of tools such as public meetings, talkworks and community appraisals.It is very important to give reports to citi-zens once the information is collected, showing how consultations affected the decisions and set the agenda of the public administration.At the same time, public administration should monitor the effectiveness of the dif-ferent tools of consultation, not petrifying on the same techniques if they don’t really involve citizens.

Action planning: It is a technique that is used especially for urban design solu-tions. Small groups of people, including specialists and facilitators discuss for 4-5 days about urban issues arriving to some final recommendations.

Public inquires: It is a very formal pro-cess, used for important decisions on big issues. Usually they are held by indepen-dent judges and the citizens who partici-pate are usually directly involved with the

51

issue to discuss about.

Public opinion survey: It is a way to gath-er information from citizens. They can be done in different forms (phone, emails, mails, face to face). The target of people interviewed should be well defined in the early phase and the questions should be quite generic in order not to influence the answers. For this reason the topics these surveys are dealing with can’t be very complex.

Open house: A project is presented in a public space and citizens can read panels with explanations and give written feed-backs. It attracts people because informal but it is quite expensive.

Social auditing: It is a cyclical process that understands and reports the social and environmental effects on all the stakehold-ers. Usually it is used by organisations.

Community appraisal: It is a technique that starts from a survey done by a small group. The responses will then be dis-cussed in bigger groups and will bring to action plans and recommendations that will then be monitored and reported. It is a long process (1-2 years).


Tools for consultation

52

Community indicators: They are measure-ments that collect information about past and current trends and help planners and citizens in taking decisions that affect fu-ture outcomes.

Petition: It is a tool that allows citizens to choose a topic they would like the public administration to discuss about. This tool gives big visibility on the issues and usu-ally involves quite many people especially if using also digital petitions.

Planning for real: It is a quite informal tool usually used to discuss about urban re-

qualification.There are 3d models of the city placed in public spaces and citizens can write comments or suggestions on pieces of paper that can then be left on the model itself. All the comments will be then divided ac-cording to the priority given (image below).

Standing citizens panel: A large number of citizens (usually more than 1000) answer regularly to surveys about policies and proposals.This tool helps to gather many datas. It is less expensive than public opinion sur-veys and it involves many citizens.


53

Epanels: They are digital platforms that allow public administrations to collect regularly opinions from an already known group of people.

Parish maps: These maps are showing what people find important and help peo-ple to explore the place. These maps are usually very creative and bring a new per-spective of the space around.

Talkworks: It is a tool used during diffe-rent stages of the process and helps peo-ple to avoid misunderstandings in further stages of the project. It involves 30 people maximum and it is held in 1 day workshop session.

Participatory theatre: It is a creative tool to involve people. Actors are performing a play and they invite people to act showing possible solutions or behaviours that can overcome a problem. It is a very informal technique.

Guided visualisation: Starting from a script, people are involved to make an imaginary journey in the future. All the images that are described by people are then recorded and a facilitator helps to create a common vision.

Public meetings: They are fast and cheap ways to involve citizens in listening the proposals of the administrators and give feedbacks at the end. The main problem of this tool is that the feedbacks are not influencing enough the final decisions; it is a tool to legitimate de-cisions.

Consultation documents: Public admini-strations publish consultation documents (printed and/or online) and ask comments from citizens. Internet makes this process easier but still this tool is not so effective.

Webchat: This tool is based on instant messaging (e.g. MSN). It is an informal way to collect information from younger stakeholders and gives the possibility to answer immediately to the questions.

Focus groups: It is a technique that in-volves a small number of people. Usually focus groups are used to investi-gate deeply some actions of specific cate-gories of citizens.


ONLINEFORUMS

21st CENTURYTOWN MEETINGS

NATIONAL ISSUES FORUMS

CROWDWISE


ANALOGUE

DIGITAL

STUDYCIRCLES

OPEN SPACEDELIBERATION

DAY

DELIBERATIVE OPINION POOLS

CHOICESMETHOD

FUTURESEARCH

CITIZENS’JURIES

CONSENSUS CONFERENCES

DEMOCS

DEMOCRACYCAFE’

PARTICIPATORY STRATEGIC PLAN

ROUND TABLEWORKSHOPS

Yougov is an online market research firm and can be consider one of the most im-portant epanel tools. It is a simple web platform where users, after a registration, can create a profile answering simple questions about their home, work, backgrounds, and inter-ests.... These information is used to de-termine on which surveys the user can be invited to answer. Surveys are dealing with many issues: politics, religion, enter-tainments, hobbies.... Registered mem-bers get points after they complete one survey and with those points they can be rewarded with money or with some gifts like t-shirts or free tickets for cinema and restaurants. There are also bigger month-ly prize surveys.

People could argue that this tool is ex-cluding from the consultation all the peo-ple that don’t use computers or internet-based devices. Anyway the results of these surveys are more accurate than traditional surveys. In Uk, where yougov has many registered members, the results of the surveys have always been extremely similar to the final ones.

54

YouGov case study


ONLINEFORUMS



CROWDWISE


ANALOGUE

DIGITAL

STUDYCIRCLES

OPEN SPACEDELIBERATION

DAY


CHOICESMETHOD

FUTURESEARCH

CITIZENS’JURIES


DEMOCS

DEMOCRACYCAFE’



During the phase of consultation, we have seen that some techniques are just col-lecting information while others are going further, defining a common point of view and some recommendations. In the phase of deliberation, recommen-dations are not enough and there is the need to involve people in the policy-making process. Collected datas and opinions should evolve in a more complete

1.8 Deliberation

55

deliberative process. Many techniques of deliberation engage a small number of people in order to be more effective (citi-zens’ juries, consensus conferences...) while others, more informal are creative like national issues forums and demo-cracy cafés are open to a wider public. Also in this phase the techniques have been represented considering the 6 varia-bles.


56

Analysing the first couple of variables (age/technology) it’s evident that analogue tools are more frequent than digital ones. The reason is that they are more effective: the deliberation phase needs an intensive discussion and sharing of opinions in or-der to deliberate a common position. It is very difficult to do this using digital tools. Paradoxically digital technology, which could help in making communication and consultation easier, is a limit for the delib-erative phase. On-line forums are the only digital tools that can be used at this phase but they are less effective and more com-plex than a traditional citizens’ jury.

There are then some techniques, like de-mocracy café or democs that are very in-formal and that can involve younger peo-ple without using digital tools.

If we consider the second couple of vari-ables (cost and time) and we compare this graph with the one of the phase of consultation, we see immediately that deliberation is more expensive and re-quires in general longer time activities. It is quite understandable because, in or-der to get a complete and effective de-liberative process, it is indispensable to have longer and more qualitative ac-

MORE TIMESHORT TIME

EXPENSIVE

CHEAP

ONLINEFORUMS



CROWDWISE

STUDYCIRCLES

DELIBERATIVE OPINION POOLSCHOICES

METHOD

FUTURESEARCH

CITIZENS’JURIES


DEMOCS

DEMOCRACYCAFE’



DELIBERATIONDAY


57

tivities compared to the ones used during the phase of consultation.The most informal deliberative techniques are cheaper and they need less time; in this way they try to involve more people especially those who are not so used and interested in participation like younger generations (democs and democracy café are good examples).

The last couple of variables (complexity of the issue and number of people involved) show clearly that these deliberative tech-niques are used just for dealing with com-plex or quite complex issues. These tools

are in fact expensive and they must be used just for important occasions. The role of the facilitator is very importantin this phase because he should check that all the voices and opinions are con-sidered and that the dialogue brings to a constructive deliberation. He also has the task of involving in the discussion all the categories that could be interested and that are relevant in order to arrive to the best final deliberation pos-sible.


COMPLEX ISSUES

EASY ISSUES

ONLINEFORUMS



CROWDWISE

STUDYCIRCLES


CHOICESMETHOD

FUTURESEARCH

CITIZENS’JURIES


DEMOCS

DEMOCRACYCAFE’



DELIBERATIONDAY


58

21st century town meetings: They are events that involve big number of people, divided into groups with one computer to collect quickly ideas and vote them from each table. They are very expensive.

Choices methods: It is a technique that in-vites people to create ideas and then to group them into possible goals. People will then decide which goal they want to work on. Action groups are then formed with the task of defining how to realize some of the ideas.

Round table workshop: Each workshop will involve 30-100 people. After receiving some technical informations on the topic, participants will write on post-its ideas and in the end the group will write a final re-port.

Future search: It is a conference during which people review the past, explore the present and define an ideal future scenar-io. After a shared vision has been shared, they will define an action plan.

Deliberation day: It is the idea suggested by James S. Fishkin to create a national

holiday day in which people are discuss-ing on important national topics just before the national elections.

Deliberative opinion pools: 200-600 cho-sen citizens answer a poll. After this, a small group of them with different positions will be invited to discuss some issues. Experts will give them informations and in the end the group will answer again the same poll.

Citizens’ juries: 12-24 selected citizens discuss on one issue for 3-4 days. They are paid and they write in the end a report with the final recommendations. It is quite expensive and doesn’t involve many peo-ple.

National issues forums: NIF institute de-fines every year the primary national is-sues and presents different approaches to that issue. Many forums in different places are held and then the outcomes are gene-rating a final report.

Study circles: Small groups of people (8-12) are meeting many times with a facilita-tor to discuss a critical issue. The people chosen should have different backgrounds and should have different points of view. It is a way to listen to the others and arrive

Tools for deliberation


to a common deliberation.

Consensus conferences: They have some similarities with citizen’s juries but citizens involved are selected within a list of volunteers. Before the final conference, there are many meetings during which citizens get a bigger knowledge of the is-sue to deliberate about.

Participatory strategic planning: It is a workshop with 20-50 people to define what citizens would like to change in the next 3-5 years. Once the possible obsta-cles to these changes are defined, a stra-tegic plan will be presented.

Crowd wise: It is a technique used for set-ting priorities. All the options will be pre-sented and ranked with consensus voting. The process encourages constructive dis-cussions.

Online forums: It is a web tool that helps people to discuss on different issues. Usu-ally it is open to everyone but it could be also restricted to some chosen people in some occasions.

Democs: It is a card game that pushes small groups of people to discuss about

59

complex issues, finding out common vi-sions. It is very informal, quite quick (2 hours) and for this reason it is engaging.

Democracy cafè: People are welcomed to have informal conversations in public spaces like café sharing opinions on one topic usually presented in the beginning. The focus is on the informal space and the friendly atmosphere.


Lawrence Susskind defined in the 80s a new approach called “consensus building approach” (CBA) bringing the points of the “alternative dispute resolution” (ADR) into public issues. ADR was showing that when the issues start to be too complex to arrive to a general agreement, the atten-tion should pass from the different posi-tions into the common interests.

Consensus building approach and open space technologyConsensus building approach

PLAN

ACTION

OBSERVE

REFLECT

REVISEDPLAN

OBSERVE

REFLECT

ACTION

Discussing on the single positions makes difficult to multiply the options and arrive to solutions different from the starting ones. Action research, known also as partici-patory research, indentifies a process in which people define a problem, plan something to solve it, and then if the re-sults are not considered good enough, can replan the process. Stephen Kemmis defined 4 steps: plan, act, observe, reflect and represented the process in a circular way.Kurt Lewin who is considered the father of the action research defined 3 principles:• Collect all the points of view to under-stand reality.• Collect not only quantitative datas but also qualitative experiences.• Understand the reality trying to change it.The “proactive listening” technique comes from these principles: before evaluating one opinion, it’s important to understand the reasons behind that brought people to generate that opinion. This technique is essential for the ADR

60


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approach underlining the importance of the interests more than the content of the opinions.This approach helps to have more con-structive dialogues and multiply the op-tions generating new positions that weren’t considered before.Marianella Sclavi, based on the conside-rations of Susskind, states that consensus building approach differs from representa-tive procedure in 3 aspects:• The traditional right to speak turns into right to listen.• The traditional right to debate turns into the right to collaborate with the multiplica-tion of the options.• The traditional majority voting turns into a participatory voting with the co-creation of new solutions.

The main difference between the two approaches is that the traditional repre-sentative procedure doesn’t consider all the points of view and the voting reflect the interests of the majority, avoiding the co-creation and the multiplication of the options. It can be well represented by the quote of Henry Ford: “You can have any colour, as long as it is black”. Consensus building approach instead gives voices to all the minorities that otherwise wouldn’t

be considered.Before using this approach, it is important to make an ethnographic evaluation in or-der to involve in the dialogue all the diffe-rent categories. It is essential the role of the facilitator: an expert in proactive listen-ing and in group dynamics.The basic dynamics of the CBA are:• Assume that everyone is right listening to all the explanations.• Make interlocutory suggestions that in-volve different interests in order to define new ideas an opinions.The CBA is not opposing the representa-tive procedure but it is improving it. Alex Osborn, who invented the brainstorming technique, underlines the importance to separate the moment of the brainstorming and generation of options, from the mo-ment of the final decision.Marianella Sclavi defines 7 essential con-ditions for a correct CBA:• Inclusions of all the different points of view.• Definition of significant issues to discuss about that can keep people involved.• The rules will be defined from the partici-pants.• It is important to understand the interests without questioning the positions.• Research of new proposals considered


62

better than the starting ones.• The final outcomes should be conside-red reasonable from the biggest number of people possible.• The process finishes when all the inte-rests are discussed and understood.

It is a tool that started in the middle of the 80s from the considerations of Harrison Owen. He noticed that during public meet-ings the most profitable moment is the coffee break because people are free to talk about issues they care with the peo-ple they want. From this consideration the Open Space Technology (OST) technique was born. These meetings don’t have fa-cilitators and a specific schedule. After all the different points of view are defined and clear, people can organize a discussion: they communicate to everybody the posi-tion they would like to discuss about and those who are interested are free to join the discussion. People involved in each group will display themselves in a circular shape, in this way everyone has the same visual importance of the others.The only rule is that participants have to move to another group if they realise they are not contributing to elevate the discus-

sion. After 80 minutes the time for dis-cussing is over and participants who start-ed the different discussions write a report with the ideas that came out. At the end of the process a report with the summary of all the debates is given to all the participants.

Compared to the Consensus building approach, the Open Space Technology is easier to organize (there is no ethno-graphic research in the early stage and the process ends in few hours) and the freedom that characterizes this approach involves more people to participate. At the same time, the outcomes can’t be as deep as the one that could have been achieved using the CBA. Not having facilitators could help to keep the tone of the discus-sion friendly and informal but doesn’t help to capitalize all the possibilities.In some cases the two approaches have been used together and the combination enriches both tools.

One example of this combination was the participatory process for the requalifica-tion of a former foundry in Modena.

Open space technology


This project of requalification of a big dis-missed industrial area in Modena used the CBA and the OST approaches.The process was divided in 5 phases:

• “First steps”, including interviews and meetings with citizens who wanted to be involved in the discussion.• “The city explores”: citizens were visiting the places they had to discuss about and

they watched presentations of similar exis-ting projects.• “The city proposes”: it was an open dis-cussion to collect ideas and points of view using the Open Space Technology tools (OST)• ”The city chooses”: few people and one facilitator were involved in this phase and they shared the different points of view using the consensus building approach

Requalification foundry Modena

63


case study case study

64

(CBA) with the aim to arrive to a final com-mon decision.• “The city decides and realizes”: the po-litical administrators present to citizens the process and the final decisions with a clear action planning.

This project took 5 months of work before arriving to the final step. After this phase, the City of Modena opened one interna-tional contest and a jury (including some participants of the process) selected the winner.


QUALE FUTURO PER LE EXFONDERIE RIUNITE?

Idee e proposte per il recupero e riuso di uno spazio importante per la nostra città

Comune di ModenaAssessorato al Bilancio e alla PartecipazioneAssessorato alla Programmazione e Gestione del territorio

Instant Report

sabato 17 - domenica 18marzo 2007

Polisportiva Villa D’Orovia dei Lancillotto,10 - Modena

OPEN SPACE TECHNOLOGY

Till now I presented some techniques helpul in order to arrive to a final delibera-tion but that can’t anyway control com-pletely the final decision and can’t set the agenda of the administration. In the phase of co-governance, the power is shared by citizens and administrators. The techniques of co-governance are used by citizens to influence the final decisions, defining the priorities and the agenda of

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their representatives. It is an on-going process. These characteristics make the difference between simple recommenda-tions or deliberations and co-governance decisions.

Till few years ago, techniques of co-gover-nance were just analogue and they were difficulty involving young people. Now some tools like e-voting and social

ONLINEFORUMS

CITIZENS’ ASSEMBLIESBY SORTITION


ANALOGUE

DIGITAL

PARTICIPATORYAPPRISAL

REFERENDUM

NEW ENGLANDTOWN MEETING

PARTICIPATORYBUDGETING

E-VOTING

YOUTHCOUNCILS

CITIZEN PARTIC.ON LOCAL PARTN.

RECALLINITIATIVE

MULTI-CHOICEBALLOTS

1.9 Co-governance Democracy and participation

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networks are making this practise easier and more appealing also for young gene-rations. In some cases public administra-tions like in Espoo (Finland) established youth councils in order to involve young people in civic activities and take into ef-fective consideration also a target of citi-zens normally excluded.Techniques of co-governance require quite long activities. Considering that they are used at the end of a participatory pro-cess, it is obvious that quite large amount of time is required. Before arriving to this phase, all the previous ones should have worked well, involving citizens that at this

point should be well informed about the is-sues they have to decide about.These activities are also quite expensive because they usually keep people in-volved for a longer time (in some cases like youth councils or citizens’ assemblies it can takes many months) and they should be well organized to avoid mistakes.One interesting example is participatory budgeting (page 72).Participatory budgeting is dealing with quite complex issues. Normally the com-plexity of the topics for this phase can’t be too high because there is the need to involve many people, but at the same time there

MORE TIMESHORT TIME

EXPENSIVE

CHEAP

CITIZENS’ ASSEMBLIESBY SORTITION


REFERENDUM



E-VOTING

YOUTHCOUNCILS


RECALL

MULTI-CHOICEBALLOTS

INITIATIVE


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isn’t any need to use co-governance tools for too easy topics because of the costs of these techniques.There should be a good compromise be-tween complexity, costs and involvement of people. In some cases assemblies open to everyone risk to favour the most pre-sent category but experience has proved that assemblies take minorities into much consideration.Referendums are some tools that can deal with quite complex issues but, in or-der to get many people involved, a good communication and a long process are re-quired.

Some Countries like Switzerland are very used to the referendum tool and they got very positive results (page 74).

Citizens participation on local partnership boards: A small number of selected citi-zens sits on partnership boards with insti-tutional partners. The problem of this tool is that the actual power of citizens in the decision-making process is quite marginal.

Citizens’ assembly by sortition: A citizens’ assembly, with randomly selected citizens,


COMPLEX ISSUES

EASY ISSUES

REFERENDUM



E-VOTING

YOUTHCOUNCILS

RECALL

MULTI-CHOICEBALLOTS

INITIATIVECITIZENS’ ASSEMBLIESBY SORTITION



Tools for co-governance


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will have final decision-making powers over important issues.

Participatory appraisal: It is a methodo-logy that is used to promote learning and interaction, using many visual methods like diagrams, rankings, Venn diagrams... The goal is to empower people to analyse problem themselves.

New England town meeting: It is a very simple method of direct democracy. It consists in a public meeting open to eve-ryone. Participants choose the issues of the discussion and the final decisions have binding power.

Multi-choice ballots: It is similar to refer-endum but there are five options that citi-zens can choose (Yes; yes but not a prior-ity; no; no with this formulation; not in this moment).

Referendum: It is a tool used to present a proposed or existing law to voters for rejection or approval (legislative referen-dum). In case of a popular referendum, citizens can force a vote on specific legis-lation.Usually a determined number of signa-tures are collected and a quorum must be


reached to make the referendum valid.

Preferendum: It is similar to multi-choice ballots but in this case voters put in order of preference all the options presented from the most appreciated to the less ap-preciated.

Initiative: After collecting the required sig-natures, citizens can propose a legislative measure.

E voting: It is a technology that allows people to vote using electronic devices. They can be in specific public places or simply personal devices such as comput-ers, televisions, phones...

Recall: It is a tool used to remove a person from his working position. It is necessaire to collect signatures (in USA 25% voters).

Participatory budgeting: It is a deliberative and decision-making process that allows citizens to decide how to allocate and invest part of the budget of their district of city. Citizens define the priorites and discuss about public spending projects.Citizens are empowered to take final deci-sions about how money should be spent (Example of Porto Alegre page 72).

Youth council: It is an independent coun-cil composed by young people (max 25 years old) that defines solutions to pre-sent to the City council. Usually many of the presented solutions will then be realized or taken into consi-deration, helping the City council to under-stand the needs of younger generations.One good example is the one of the city of Espoo (Finland).


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Public assemblies started in Athens in the fifth century B.C with Ecclesia (page 29). It was the most important authority and it was deliberating laws and taking deci-sions about wars. All the male citizens could take part of the assembly (around 30.000 people) but all the slaves were ex-cluded and important people had higher clout in the final voting.These kinds of public assemblies were

present in Europe in the middle age as well: in Belgium they were called “gen-eralitè”. These assemblies were elect-ing the municipal councils and had voice to influence important decisions: municipal council infact had to sum-mon the assembly for all the big issues like decisions on taxes, budgeting, new regulations and important public works.Nowadays similar kinds of assemblies

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work really well in Switzerland where the 85% of the municipalities are administrat-ed in this way. There are also assemblies at cantonal level: citizens are meeting once every year and the voting is made by a show of hands. The issues are deal-ing with budgeting and discussions on citi-zens’ proposals. No laws are approved if the public assembly doesn’t agree.

In the USA there are administrations based on Open Town Meetings (OTMs) which have a long tradition. The first town meetings we have knowledge about was held at the end of the 17th century. Like in Switzerland, OTMs have more power than elected administrations. They are public meetings that are held once a year and citizens decide the issues to deliber-ate about (after collecting enough signs). The voting is done showing hands and for difficult issues some information is given to citizens before the town meeting.Usually these meetings are held in quite small cities but there are some exceptions (for example Boston). The average of par-ticipation during open town meetings is around 20% of the total citizens but it is much higher in small cities and lower in big cities. The decisions that are taken during these

public meetings have then binding power. In Massachusetts just 2% of citizens said to have some doubts about the final deci-sions taken in the assembly.

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Participatory budgeting is an innovative method of resource management that was born in 1989 in Porto Alegre, a Brazi-lian city with 1,4 milion inhabitants. Olivio Dutra, the winner of the elections, focused his electoral campaign on partici-pation and on the creation of participa-tory budgeting. In 1990 public assemblies started the definition of a new system that back then didn’t exist in any other part of the world.Anyway the final decisions of these pub-lic meetings and the projects that have been approved never started and in 1991 around 1000 citizens staged a sit-in in the City hall. After this action all the projects deliberated by citizens started. Public as-semblies became more and more popular. In 1990 they were gathering 1200 inhabit-ants, in 1994 over 15000.In 2001 the Municipality of Porto Alegre opened a web page that helps citiziens to follow the participatory budgeting.The process starts every year in March with some public assemblies that involve citizens and associations. These meetings

are organized in each of the 16 dis-tricts, involving thousands of people. During these assemblies there is the elec-tion of the people in charge of discussing weekly the needs of the districts. There is also a presentation about the status of the projects realized in the previous years. Dur-ing the following public assemblies, citizens and elected budget delegates are defining the priorities of the district and they vote

Porto Alegre case study


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which of them to implement. Some techni-cians from the Municipality are also pre-sent helping to keep the discussion more productive.The Municipal Council of the Budget is composed by 32 delegates (2 from each of the 16 districts) that present the request of each district. This Municipal Council is responsable to indentify the projects to be financed based on the resources of the Municipality. The Council together with some members of the Public Administra-tion approves the budgeting that then will be binding. Only the mayor may veto but this has never happened in Porto Alegre.

Some theorists criticize this system, argu-ing that it can not last, but the results and the growing desire to participate, show the opposite.Right now around 50,000 people are year-ly involved in the participatory budgeting discussions in Porto Alegre.This example shows how co-governance can work. Anyway it took years to define this system that every now and then re-quires some changes and improvementsAfter Porto Alegre other cities adopted a similar approach but they are usually small size towns. Porto Alegre is an interesting example be-

cause shows that such a system can work also in a big city.

in Switzerland is around 50% and there is no quorum. Swiss citizens are also well informed about the issues to vote: this is due to a good communication campaign that provides all the information in a brou-chure that is sent home with the voting paper.The economist Gebhard Kirchgässner has developed a research that highlightshow these instruments of direct demo-

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As mentioned earlier, referendum is one of the most used tool of co-governance.Switzerland is a Country which has a long tradition of public meetings and constantly deals with referendum.

In Switzerland there are three tools of di-rect democracy:• The mandatory referendum: It is organi-zed when the Parliament amends a provi-sion of the Constitution.• The optional referendum: any law can be subjected to a referendum if 50,000 citizens sign a request within 100 days.• Initiatives of citizens: if popular propo-sals collect at least 100,000 signatures, citizens can propose laws.

At cantonal and municipal level, there is also the financial referendum: each spend-ing over € 6 million must be approved by citizens with a referendum, while each spending between € 600,000 and € 6 mil-ion is subject to an optional referendum if 1500 signatures are collected.The percentage of turnout for referendum

Switzerland and referendum case study



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cracycy have a positive influence on eco-nomic growth with less tax evasion, less governmental spendings and less debt.Regarding the mandatory referendum, the 80% of the polls confirms the decision of the authorities. In the optional referen-dum, the percentage drops to 50% while the 90% of the initiatives of the citizens are rejected. It must be said however, that in many cases the Government is propos-ing a counterproposal keeping into con-sideration the issues of the citizens. The Swiss scholar Gross states that in 50% of the cases, the promoting committees are satisfied.

Contrary to what many people could think, Swiss citizens are able to assess the op-portunity to support short-term sacrifices in exchange for benefits in longer period. Citizens infact several times approved tax increases.Other instruments of direct democracy that are used in the 85% of the Munici-palities in Switzerland are public meetings that take the control over the Municipali-ties. These public meetings are held four times a year and bring together hundreds of citizens that discuss about taxation, ap-prove local laws, discuss the municipal budget, and evaluate projects.

In conclusion, Switzerland is a good ex-ample of how forms of co-governance can operate and lead to concrete results of good administration: reduction of public expenditure, greater involvement in politi-cal matters, greater transparency and less distance between politicians and citizens.

In this chapter I present which is the link between democracy and design and how this one can bring an extra value to the definition of a new participatory system.I present some recent case studies that show the wish of Civil Society to be more active and how the power of the web changed the society and our daily life.The case studies also show how this po-tential can be used to reduce the gap be-tween citizens and Administrators and to create a sense of community.

Chapter 2

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Design and democracy

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The professionals who are usually asso-ciated to politics and democracy are not designers and for many people the link between design and democracy or politics is quite mysterious. Politics is infact con-sidered much too intangible to be matter of a designer.Despite this, in the last years the design companies that believe in social design and in the possibility to work on this mys-terious link are increasing.One of the main theorists of this social aspect of design is Victor Papanek. In his book “design for a real world”, Papanek starts criticizing the figure of the designer saying:

There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a few of them…only one profession is phonier. Advertis-ing design, in persuading people to buy things they don’t need, with money they don’t have, in order to impress other who don’t care.

He finds designers responsible for the cul-

ture of consumism that started spread-ing during last century. At the same time he introduces a new direction that design should follow, underlining the moral obbli-gation of designers. He suggests design-ers should invest some of their time in pro-jects for under-served people like poors, elderly, disables and other minorities. The aim of design should be reset, following new challenges for big social changes.

The different perspective of Papanek is very well illustrated in the flow chart he inserts in his book (page 80), underlin-ing the social and moral responsability of designers. There is a great distinction be-tween the real needs of people and the false goals that are achieved because of advertising and propaganda.I found interesting and relevant that in this flow chart, he pointed parties and “token-ism” among the false goals achieved and instead he points the importance of “par-ticipation in making goals for society and themselves”.Starting from these considerations, I de-

2.1 The role of design

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cided that defining how design could af-fect democracy is a very interesting chal-lenge. As a service designer, I see much more my moral obbligation, expecially in this historical moment.

Papanek was writing these thought al-ready in the early 70’s and not much has been done in the last 4 decays. In the last few years things started chang-ing, and more people noticed the impor-tance of the social aspect of design.

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One social design agency that worked on many projects of social design is Think-public. They realized a very interesting documentary titled “Us Now” considering the interactions that run between Govern-ment, internet and the power of mass col-laboration. This documentary has been presented to the UK Houses of Parliament and to the European Union. The New York Times stated that Us Now “paints a future in which every citizen is connected to the State as easily as to Fa-cebook, choosing policies, questioning politicians, collaborating with neighbours”.

Some important theorists and British poli-ticians have been interviewed on critical issues like transparency and open parti-cipation. One inspiring point of view pre-sented in the documentary was the one of Sophia Parker (public policy specialist), who states:

“Public services need to start not with problems and needs but instead with peo-ple and what they can bring.

The reason why people want to get in-volved is because they feel they have something to give back”.

This different perspective focuses on the richness of participation and on the will of people to participate and be active actors in the society. According to me public services and poli-tics are living structures and citizens can’t be passive but it is normal that they have this wish to feel alive. Right now there are not enough tools that allow citizens to feel alive and participate. This wish to be ac-tive is even increasing when there is politi-cal disaffection.The video is presenting many new ser-vices and behaviours that are spreading among people, in order to demostrate that society is changing and that the models we considered till yesterday are not valid anymore. The services presented in the video are various and dealing with diffe-rent topics and for a service designer are very understandable and actual.Although some of the examples are not

Think Public: Usnow

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directly related to politics, they are useful to present a society that changed beha-viours. The spread of the net helped in building new communities and services that are easily connecting people with common interests. This will happen soon also with politics and, if we consider that politics should be the mirror of society, this means that we should rethink and make politics less obsolete. Many interesting issues came out from Usnow. The examples that are presented, show that the costs of sharing informa-tions are much lower than the beneficts that users can get, and this is mostly due to the efficiency of the net.

Professor Clay Shirky from New York Uni-versity, states that the 20th century was abnormal. Now people are doing things because “they like each other, they care for each other and they want to get reco-gnition a reputational capital”. A point of view similar to the one of Sophia Parker, introducing one important word: “recognition”.It seems that hierarchies are not work-ing anymore, because they concentrate the power on few people and don’t give the chance to citizens to share ideas and

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take initiatives. If in the past there was the need of institutions, now there is the need of communities and platforms that help people to interact and share interests.Participatory politics and participatory democracy are considered similar but democracy has a wider connotation, not necessairly related to politics.

I want to present the one that I think was the most interesting case study presented in Usnow; I found it meaningful because it deals with football and how new services and systems could be applied on a tradi-tional sport that apparently doesn’t give great opportunity to such big innovations.


MyFootballClub is a society that recruits football fans in order to let them purchase one football team. The members have then the control of the team through a democratic voting system based on Inter-net. The decisions taken are many, start-ing from the selection of the players that will play till decisions about the food pro-vided in the stadium or the merchandising. In 2008 almost the 96% of the members

agreed to purchase Ebbsfleet United F.C. Ebbsfleet united Football club is an Eng-lish football team founded in 1946. One of the most famous players of this team was Roy Hodgson, actual manager of the Eng-lish football team. Almost 30,000 members paid £35 each to get the takeover of the team. This means that the club is owned equally by all the members that can vote all the important decisions. The members

Ebbsfleet United

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case study


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come from more than 70 Countries and many of them come from Scandinavia. The number of members anyway decreased in the following years, with many people not renewing; this was mostly due to the dif-ficult economic situation of the team.This is not the only example; there are in-fact many similar projects in Uk and other 10 Countries in the world with the manage-ment of football teams controlled by many members. Web platforms that offer similar services are for example ownaclub.com or fivepoundfootballclub.com The first one differs from MyFootballClub because doesn’t ask for annual subscriptions but for one off payments.Also in Italy a similar service called Squadramia exists and in 2008 more than 20000 members purchased Santar-cangelo Calcio, a team in Serie D. The registred members can decide the lineup of the team, suggest new talented football players and share opinions in a specific

forum. I presented this case study because I be-lieve there is a clear connection with poli-tics, even though the topic is football. In this case we could see the football team management as the public administration and this example gives a different per-spective, showing how participation could work in a system that is complex, present-ing how many people can deliberate on important issues.The main difference with public adminis-tration is that in the example of the football team, every member is also the owner of the football club so has the right to decide, while in our political system the people who have the right to decide are the ones that are elected by the citizens. Anyway it could be interesting to rethink big systems (like democratic political systems) with the same point of view that the creators and the designers of “myfootballclub” had.


Victor Margolin, professor of design his-tory at the University of Illinois, believes that design has a big potential that is not espressed yet. According to him, design can be applied in democracy, helping to increase the quality of public institutions and of all the mecha-nisms that are related to the normal life of citizens.Designers are usually not involved for the definition of big public issues, least of all for the ideation of new democratic scena-rios. But times are changing and like Peter Drucker states:

“Every few hundred years in Western his-tory there occurs a sharp transformation. Within a few short decades, society rear-ranges itself; its worldview, its basic val-ues, its social and political structures, its arts, its key institutions. Fifty years later there is a new world.”

If we take into consideration a City, we

notice that there is a tangible part and an intangible one. The tangible part is everything we can see around, the public spaces, the pri-vate houses, the shops, the streets, the parks.... If we consider the intangible part we have many regulations, laws and ser-vices that are controlled by a public ad-ministration and without the intangible part, also the tangible one would be much different.If we then consider that democracy is the system that is used to make a city or a Country work, it is easy to imagine why the role of the designer is important, par-ticularly in moments when that historical transformation said by Drucker is happen-ing.

In my vision a city is just a big product, much more complicated than others be-cause the users are variegated, the size is much more relevant and there is the need of many competences working together. When Victor Papanek was describing the difficulty for designers in dealing with so-

2.2 Design a democracy

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and for a democracyDesigning a democracy

cial design he stated:

“I must admit that many of the students became interested because of the novelty of the problem. Later they found that be-ing involved in this type of social design is much more difficult than creating still another teapot, or perfect salt cellar” .

Designers are working more and more on the definition of product service systems and if we assume the City as a product, we can then assume the governance sys-tem as a system where designers can work on. Like said earlier the fileds of de-sign are growing and increasing in num-ber and now many design companies are dealing with the intangible part and with experience design.I see design as a flexible discipline that can bring an extra-value in many fields that can go from easy issues till complex ones like well-being and even more com-plex like democratic systems.Social design defined many new creative and innovative solutions in the fields of education, public health and more in ge-neral the well-being of the person. The reason is that designers start their ap-proach considering the final user before creating a solution and they use metho-

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dologies such as user inspired design that help to reframe even difficult issues.That’s why designers are important re-sources that can be used in many fields and expecially in those that are forgetting the importance of the users.Politics is one of these fields and design can be a big opportunity for the definition of a more believable and updated political system.Tony Golsby-Smith underlines the “wid-ening of the influence of design” and ac-cording to him design should be involved for the definition of modern organizations, governments and communities.How can we call for example the people that created the democracy in Athens, bringing a very innovative system that is still used now? Were they politicans or something more? For me that is a good example of design that affected big sys-tems like politics and democracy.Planning a complex system like that re-quires many expertises and if we come back to nowadays, we can understand what an important resource design can be in a moment in which politics came too ob-solete. Would be politicians alone able to renovate a system that doesn’t work any-more, or do they need the help of some other professionals?


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Designing a democracy is a very complex issue but the existing examples show that it is possible to work also on these crucial topics and they can be an interesting chal-lenge for designers. The first experiments of liquid democracy and platforms like liquidfeedbacks (page 31) are interesting examples that prove what designers can give to important and hard matters like politics and democracy.

Designing a new type of democracy can be not necessary in many cases but I think it is more crucial to work on the gap bet-ween representative democracy and di-rect democracy. Participation is nowadays fundamental for the updating of democra-cy. I presented many techniques and case studies that are showing the importance of these new tools and that are showing which role design can have.Like well discussed by Victor Margolin,

“design for democracy adresses new op-portunities for citizens to participate in democratic processes”

He focuses on the tools that allow a big engagement of citizens defining transpa-

Designing for a democracy

rency and participation as the two main pillars of a democratic system.Transparency consists in showing all the processes, giving awareness to citizens while participation is the possibility to in-volve citizens in the processes of govern-ance, giving voice to all the different points of view.

The Obama administration wrote a memo-randum for the heads of executive De-partments and agencies speaking about transparency and open government.It starts saying:

“My administration is committed to creat-ing an unprecedented level of openness in government. We will work together to en-sure the public trust and establish a sys-tem of transparency, public participation and collaboration. Openness will strength-en our democracy and promote efficiency and efffectiveness in government”.

The three key points are that Government should be transparent, participatory and collaborative. Somehow we can recognise in these three phases the ones of com-munication, consultation and deliberation that I defined earlier.Regarding the transparency, it is important


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to provide information to citizens about what the public administration is doing. According to Obama’s memorandum, it is crucial to harness new technologies, bringing online all the information and the decisions. Then public administrations should also invite citizens to give feed-backs identifying priorities. An open Gov-ernment should then be participatory, giv-ing possibility to citizens to express their ideas, improving the quality of the final decisions. Collaboration is then possible if there is an active engagement using “in-novative tools and methods”. For the definition of these tools and meth-ods, it is important to have notions of communication, interaction and service design.One of the final answers to this memoran-dum was the creation of the service “We the people” (page 89).

Usually all these services are spreading in the web because that is a fast, easy and cheap way to interact; at the same time it is important to underline that the job of thedesigner is not related just on the creation of a web platform but it is crucial to con-sider all the other aspects that can keep these services alive. It is very important to work on the commu-

nication and the engagement of the peo-ple but also on the other steps like the classification and the use of the collected datas. Designers can have a big role during the development of these service systems.


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We the people is an online service that was born in 2009 in USA. It is the most evi-dent example given by Obama Adminis-tration about its idea of open Government.

It is an online platform where people can create and join petitions that help the Gov-ernment to understand the priorities of the citizens giving feedbacks and taking ac-tions.

Every petitions needs a certain number of signatures to get through. If it does, the White house staff will read it and will send it to the specific experts and offices. They will then give an official response to all the people who signed the petition. The current petition threshold is 25.000 sig-natures. Once a person creates a new peti-tion, it is then possible to spread the link with facebook and twitter in order to encourage

We the people case study

other people to join it.

Creating a petition with “we the people” is extremly simple: the users have to complete the sentence: “We believe the Obama Administration should....” After that it is possible to select up to three pre-set issues that best describe the petition.The web platfrom will then search for simi-lar petitions with similar key words: in this way it is possible not to generate a dupli-cate but simply to join an already existing petition. It is better not to create too many of them on the same issue because that makes more difficult the achievement of

the threshold of 25000 signatures for an official response. The starter of the dis-cussion has just 120 characters for the title and 800 for a brief description: this is a way to make people concise and make the job of reading the petitions faster.It is possible to add tags that help other people that are interested in similar issues to find the petition. Every petition will have a URL that is possible to share and spread with social networks and other types of blogs. If it reaches enough signatures in a given amount of time, it will be sent to the official Administration that will deliver the issue to the specific offices giving back an

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official response.All the official responses will be sent via email to all the members who signed the petitions but they are present also on the web platform. It is possible to filter the pe-titions on the base of the issue a person is interested in. I found interesting that the petitions are very variagated and they go from hard topics such has the violation of human rights to easier ones like the White house beer recipe.

This web platform has been very appre-ciated by users that wrote already more than 50,000 petitions. The White house staff was forced to raise the threshold from 5,000 to 25,000 signatures because too many petitions were reaching the thres-hold. The time given to the users to collect the required number of signatures is 30 days and the new petitions that don’t pass the 150 signatures are not even visible. This is a good example of transparency and open Government because allows citizens to bring important issues to the administration and creates an interac-tion between citizens and Government that before didn’t exist. One aspect of the service that could be implemented is the development of the official responses and the possibility to start a real discussion.

Right now infact it is possible just to get an answer but it is not even possible to com-ment that answer.A real participatory platform should give the possibility not only to get responses but should also create a discussion. At Governmental level that can be ex-tremely complex and the fact that the threshold raised so much is a sign of that difficulty. Anyway WeThePeople is an innovative platform that helps to give voice to citi-zens and that makes them closer to the Administration.


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Everyblock is a web platform that works in 19 big cities in USA including New York, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco. This platform helps neighborhood to share news and to connect with the neighbors.Every user needs to register and create a profile in order to enjoy the service. It is important to write the post code, in this way the platform is giving the user just the information of the neighborhood where the user lives. Everyblock is reporting different types of news, from crime reports, to neighbor dis-cussions, to sharing of photos.In the home page there are mainly 4 cate-gories: • Neighbor messages: these messages can be news reports, simple questions or more complex discussions about impor-tant issues of the neighborhood.• Civic information: reports made by the administration that are posted online. • Media mentions: The user can be in-formed every time the neighborhood is in the news with a report of what has been reported on the web in the last 24 hours.

• Links with other services: It is possible to post photos with a Flickr account, reviews of businesses on Yelp, lost-and-found posts with Craiglist. It is also possible to get information about renting flats or ap-plications for alteration to property.It is then possible to read all the events present in the area and create new ones. There is a calendar that helps the user to remember the events and the appoint-ments. Everyblock has some similarities with another web platform: Meetup

Meetup is a social network that facilitate offline group meetings. It is possible to find a group of people with similar interests (politics, movies, photography, cars....). Entering the ZIP code or the name of the city is then possible to enter the topic the user is interested about. Meetup then helps also the user to find available places for the meeting. The events can be filtered on the base of the popularity, the proximity and the novelty. There is a calendar that helps the users todisplay the events and the meetings in a

Everyblock and Meetup case study

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easier way.This platform was born after the attacks on September 11 when meetup co-found-er Scott Heiferman realized that after that terrible event, people in New York had the need to create a stronger community, meeting more people and sharing opi-nions. This gave him the idea to use inter-net and a web platform to connect people facilitating the offline meetings.The similarities of these two platforms arethat they developed an easy way to con-nect people that are living close to each other. The first example is keeping these meetings more on a virtual level with shar-

ing of information and events of a specific neighborhood, while the second example is more focused on creating offline groups with common interests. These platforms are good case studies of how the web can increase the sense of community. Unfortunatelly there is no link between these two platforms and the public admin-istrations: in this way many resources and ideas that can come out during the meet-ings and the online discussions are losing some of their potential.

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In Italy there are not many examples of participation at governmental level and we are quite far from the level of participa-tion present in other Countries like USA. The only example that I think it is valuable to be presented is a platform called “le fab-briche di Nichi”. It is the first experiment made by an Italian political party in order to create groups of people spread all around Italy and also around the world that want to

share a new way to collaborate, chang-ing the communication and the activities of politics. The main web platform shows all the exis-ting “factories”, displayed in a geographi-cal map. Every virtual factory represents a local group of people that are normally meeting to discuss, share ideas or create good actions for their city.The website is just a tool to find and enter

Le fabbriche di Nichi case study


in contact with the nearest factory. There are then reported some examples of good actions of the citizens. The approach of “le fabbriche di Nichi” compared to the one of “we the people” is quite different. In this case there is no connection bet-ween citizens and public administrations but it is a tool that helps citizens to meet, discuss about important issues and create good voluntary actions.

Some of the critical aspects of this plat-form are that it involves people with similar political orientation and that the factories didn’t really achieved important results. Right now there are 602 factories spread all around the world. The participation shows that citizens are active and like Sophia Parker said “they feel thay have something to give back”. The initiatives organized are mainly dis-cussions but also more creative voluntary initiatives such as guerilla gardening.The problem that I found in “le fabbriche di Nichi” is the evidence of the propaganda aim of the platform. This is clear from the first lines “The mobilitation that brought to the reconfirmation of Nichi Vendola as President of Puglia Region is a valuable heritage that can’ t be wasted”. The fact itself that the name of the plat-

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form contains the name of the politican, confirms the partiality of the whole system.The potential that could come out from the meetings is loosing credibility and effec-tiveness if there is a partial vision and if there isn’t a structured system that links citizens and politcians. Sherry Arnstein would define this kind of participation as “manipulation”, and it would represent the lowest step in the lad-der of participation that she defined (page 35).

Anyway this is an attempt that shows how difficult is for politicians to give a completely open space for sharing ideas. Like said earlier there is an important dis-tinction between a fake participation that won’t bring to any real result and a partici-pation that really involves different actors and achieves results. In my opinion “le fabbriche di Nichi” is si-milar to “meetup” with the main difference that the system of the first one is less wel-coming and is too polarized.

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Decorourbano is an online open source service present in Italy that helps citizens to point out some inefficiencies in their ci-ties. It is a sort of social network that helps to communicate with the Public Adminis-trations. Decoro urbano is free for the citizens and also for the Municipalities. It is very easy to point out inefficiencies divided in 6 cate-gories: refuse, roads, green area, vanda-

lism, road signs, illegal postings. The registered users can make a report using the website or the smart phone ap-plication. The users will locate the report in a geographical map (the smartphones do this automatically) and will choose the correct icon according to the matter of the problem. They can also attach photos to show clearly how is the situation.If the Municipality is registred as well (at

DecoroUrbano - Comunichiamo case study


the moment in Italy there are 55 Munici-palities that are using this service), it can communicate the status of the reports, and when the problems have been solved. In any case every Municipality, also the ones not registered, can visualize the reports online.

Another application very similar to this one with the same aim, is Comunichiamo. There are just more categories of ineffi-ciencies that users can choose and inside everyone of these, there are more speci-fications to select. There is then a sum-mary that summarizes the reports and the

status. These are the two main services present in Italy for the report of local inef-ficiencies. These applications are extrem-ly easy to use and they are getting quite much success. Some big cities like Rome have infact started using them. Also for this service is crucial that the Ad-ministrations are reading the reports. The main problem in fact could be that people are making reports and the Municipality doesn’t even know that the service exists, causing the lack of trust of the service it-self. The Municipalities should then create a group of people that are responsible for reading the reports and solve the prob-lems. The different categories present in these platforms can already help to divide the warnings and adress them to the ap-propriate offices.Abroad similar services started spread-ing earlier: this is the case for example of services like seeclickfix.com or fix-mystreet.com.The only limitations that I find in these kinds of services is that if they start to spread easiliy, the numbers of reports in big cities would start to be considerable and at the same time it is not possible to create a real discussion with the Public Administration about more important and general issues.

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Impossible living is a global community born to map abandoned buildings and ar-eas in the cities. The interface is very sim-ple and clear: users are posting pictures of abandoned buildings and are locating them in a map. The aim of this service is extremly ambicious and it consists of 4 steps:• 1 create a database with all the aban-doned buildings.

• 2 Give enough tools and knowledge to citizens helping them to start the definition of a project.• 3 Find professionals that can help for the development of the projects.• 4 Find money to realize the projects.

Right now just the first step is really work-ing: the main problem of this service is that without any structured link with public ad-

case study Impossible living

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ministrations, it is very hard to get precise information about the abandoned areas. In my thesis I will make in the end a simu-lation that will investigate what to do with an abbandoned area in Monza; what I have seen from this experience is that be-fore arriving to a project, it is important to collect much information and knowledge. Impossible living, for the way it is struc-tured can’t provide enough information on all the pointed cases. An agreement with public administrations would be crucial but the lack of this makes the service weaker.This is the real problem that makes then the steps 3 and 4 impossible.

I would also say that keeping such an am-bicious process just online doesn’t help to involve people. Online platforms are in fact good tools for easy and fast tasks that don’t require great efforts; in this case the definition of complex projects can’t be addressed to the same people that listed the abandoned places.

This service anyway is focusing on a cru-cial issue. When in May 2012 I partici-pated to an event in Cascina Cuccagna in Milano called “Democrazia partecipativa si può” (Participatory democracy: we can), around 80 citizens divided in different groups defined the participation on aban-doned areas like the most crucial issue. This means that impossibleliving is a ser-vice that has some good potential but at the same time it is not enough structured to arrive to the final aim of making aban-doned places revived.


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Darsena pioniera is a project that started in 2009 when a group of citizens develo-ped a participatory project for the requalifi-cation of Darsena, a green area in Milano that became degraded for the negligence of many years.The citizens living in this area started with some projects of cleaning and guerilla gar-dening and after those, they started deve-loping a real project of requalification.

They organized workshops and participa-tory meetings involving environmentalist organizations and citizens of the district for the definition of a project. They also opened a blog page (image be-low) to collect the opinions of the citizens. It took almost 2 years for the definition of the project and that was sent to the Munici-pality of Milano at the end of 2010. Some volunteers realized a visualisation of the

Darsena Pioniera case study


new Darsena with renders and illustra-tions available on the blog page (images below).In 2011 the new Administration approved a project for the requalification of the Area but didn’t take into consideration the one developed by this group of citizens brush-ing up an old project. These citizens are still meeting to define the project they would like asking the Municipality to or-ganize collaborative and participatory plan.

This example shows how strong is the wish of participation. Somehow the job of

these citizens hasn’ t been useless be-cause they helped the speed-up of the re-qualification of the area. Unfortunaltelly the project they developed wasn’t even taken into consideration and didn’t receive any feedback from the Mu-nicipality. The clear problem is that it’s very difficult to get results if there isn’t an already structured participatory system. In this case citizens created a system by their own. The Municipality of Milano in this case found out that the best solution was to find a compromise between the requests of the citizens and the already existing pro-jects developed in the previous years. The final project of requalification could have been improved listening to the observa-tions of the citizens but it is clear that the Political system is not habit to participa-tion and in some cases prefers to build a wall between them and people.

Like in the case study of Impossible liv-ing, it is evident that the crucial point is to create and define clearly a participatory system with clear rules and duties, involv-ing not only citizens but also public admin-istrations.

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In 2011 the Municipality of Milano started the project Copia e incolla x Milano.It is a web platform supported by a fa-cebook page in which citizens can post images and write ideas showing interest-ing solutions they saw abroad and that they would like to import in Milano. In few months more than 1200 ideas have been collected and some of them have been selected and discussed in the city council. The link of this service is present on the homepage of the website of the Munici-pality and has been promoted with public manifestos and boards.The platform allows citizens to read all the ideas and all of them are filed and can be consulted.The 80% of the ideas were dealing with transportations, green spaces and envi-ronment in general. One specific software adresses the diffe-rent ideas to the correct departments and offices. All the projects that will be reali-zed will be then presented on the web platform.The town councillor Chiara Bisconti said

that this experiment was very success-ful and many of the ideas, such as pic-nic tables and benches in parks or buses and metro running at night, have been approved and realized. Other request in-stead already existed and citizens just didn’t know: this was the case of the card of services (AmaMI) or the smartphone application for purchasing bus tickets.She said that the ideas were so many that

case study Copia e incolla x Milano

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the Municipality can’t realize all of them, so it would be nice if some companies or groups of citizens could “adopt” some of this valuable projects.The first two ideas that have been se-lected and presented to the city council are two new services called “happy pop-ping” and “rivivaio”. The first one it is an invitation to resturants, bars and shops to facilitate breastfeeding with a guide that shows the places with this facility. The second service instead allows people to brings plants they don’t want anymore in some meeting points. In this way every-one could take them for free.

I think that, compared to the previous case studies, this one is more valuable because there is a clear connection between Ad-ministration and citizens. This connection works and brought to the definition of new services, starting from citizens’ reports.


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All the previous case studies have some-thing in common: they are services and platforms that are using Internet.The web is now challenging many struc-tures that lasted for many decays and centuries. Newspapers, books, cds will probably disappear and this revolution is happening in a very short time because of the big possibilities of the web. On the web ideas and reputation are cru-cial and users can be called prosumers (producers + consumers). This means that they are not anymore passive con-sumers but they become active with a role in the process. Lance Bennett states:

“people who have long been on the receiv-ing end of one-way mass-communication are now increasingly likely to become pro-ducers and trasmitters.”

The most evident example is wikipedia: the largest and most popular general re-ference work on the Internet with more than 100,000 active contributors from all

around the world. Another example could be Linux that is an open source software developed by a big writing community on the web. Linux doesn’t have a head office but can provide for free a software that a company like Microsoft would pay billions to deve-lop. This gives the idea of how many va-luable ideas there can be and how much potential the web has.Another system that will change because of the web will be Politics. Politics is starting now to understand the power of the web. The first politican who clearly took advantage from this strong in-strument was Obama that in 2008 won the Presidential elections because he under-stood the importance of using new tools like social networks (page 46).Before Obama just the Democratic Go-vernator Howard Dean in 2003 experi-mented with success Internet and online platforms like meetup (page 92).In Italy as well social networks had a cru-cial role to reach the quorum in 2011 refe-rendum.

2.3 The power of the web Designing for democracy

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Bernard Manin describes this phase like a shifting from the “democracy of the par-ties” to a “democracy of the public”, mean-ing that parties are not anymore able to control the public opinion because of the spread of new channels. One thing that is happening is that social movements are increasing and they start to have a fundamental role in society. If it is true that some traditional forms of parti-cipation like elections are losing approval, it is also true that new forms of participa-tion are increasing. New words like e-de-mocracy or e-participation are spreading and internet has now a great impact on democratic participation: the Pirate party in Germany and Movimento cinque stelle in Italy are two visible examples of how the web is fast in changing systems that lasted for centuries.Rosanvallon introduces that concept of “counter-democracy”. This doesn’t mean that e-democracy is not democratic but that it is a “democracy of indirect pow-ers disseminated through society which complements the democracy of the usual electoral representative system”. Till now the web has been used by politi-cians just with a top-down view and not as a bi-directional resource. This caused that non-institutional actors started to be

part of democracy and they are causing a “depoliticization” of the system. There is the need of a new system that brings together citizens and Public Institu-tions: in other words there is the need of a real and structured participation. If this won’t happen, citizens could take power by themselves and definitively kill the ac-tual political system. This concern is clear in the words of the Italian President Giorgio Napolitano:

“We shouldn’t make a blunder, considering the web like a miracle that solves all the problems: this is just offering new impor-tant ways to get in touch with politics and new incentives for aggregation of consen-sus and dissensions. There is no effective participation without the involment of the political parties. I would like to say this to young citizens: the gap between refusing parties and refusing politics is small and could be fatal because could bring to the end of freedom and democracy.”

Another interesting aspect of the web, it is the possibility to raise money with the mi-cro-fundraising. “Kickstarter”, “The point” and “Sellaband”are some web platforms that are raising money to develop or sus-tain projects (page 108).

In Italy the number of internet accesses are lower than in other European Coun-tries (52% of Italians have Internet access compared to the 65% average of the Eu-ropean Union [Eurostat 2009]). Anyway also in Italy there are good examples of fund raising with the web. “Raiperunanotte” was a Tv programme that became possible just because 50.000 people gave a small donation online. The programme was broadcasted in streaming and over 4 milion people have watched it. Raiperunanotte proves that the web can change also the idea of television: proba-bly in the future people will choose the programs to fund.Also the world of journalism is evolving quickly. Social networks, using hashtags and tweets, can spread the news much faster than any other media. Twitter is a good example of micro-blogging. Micro-blogging is a form of blogging with shorter text messages and instantaneus mes-sage delivery. Blogs and microblogs are showing the wish of people to be active and share information and news that in many cases are spreading earlier on the web than in other traditional channels.Professor Andrew Chadwick underlines the need to integrate old and new prac-tises, expecially in a crucial field like poli-

tics. Participatory forms should be appeal-ing and they should integrate online and offline tools. He describes this interaction between old and new media with the word “Hybridation”. An hybrid media system infact rejects the dicotomoy thinking and investigate the overlapping of two differ-ent systems that apparently can’t merge together.In this way political elites and non-institu-tional actors shouldn’t be seen as a dico-tomy but as two parts of a new system in which media and communication have a crucial importance.Social media, blogs, emails and online services give the opportunity to have a big-ger audiance and an active participation. At the same time there are some theorists that are sceptic about the possibility of the web to create participatory movements. Internet infact is a challenge: on one hand it offers the possibility to create a faster in-teraction between different actors such as citizens and politicians, but on the other hand the web is changing rapidly and this requires a well-thought structure that can take all the processes under control.It is crucial to define the target of the on-line participation: internet infact could be a tool that makes the participation easier for already active citizens, or could try to

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involve new people that are normally pas-sive with a campaign of mobilitation.Some studies show that internet en-hanced the use of traditional participa-tory forms involving in particular younger citizens and women. This is an interesting result because the web could become the “hybrid” tool that allows the mobilization of groups that are normally more excluded from the political world. The results also indicate that citizens that are using inter-net are more politically competent than the others and that those who are using both online and offline tools, are the most capable.

The European project civicweb made a study to analyse the factors that would mo-tivate young citizens to become more ac-tive in political issues. The results shows that the main key words are efficacy, easy accessibility and appeal, while factors that are demotivating the participation are the complexity of the system and the request of too many efforts.There is usually great scepticism about the real influence that citizens could have to make a difference. People need to see that their efforts are bringing to some-thing concrete and if this is not presented clearly, it brings to frustration and lack of

trust in participation and in the system in general. There is the need of a demo-stration, showing how the process really works with examples that worked in the past. People need to see the beneficts otherwise they loose easily their trust. The case study “Impossible living” is one example that right now doesn’t work be-cause doesn’t present any benefict: none of the projects arrived till the end. This shows that if the web platform is left to itself, in many cases doesn’t bring to any concrete result.

The hybridation between online and offline and between citizens and public adminis-trations is crucial for the development of a new democratic participatory system. The web offers many opportunities that till few decays ago weren’t even conceivable but at the same time is a new challenge that still presents many uncertain sides.


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Kickstarter is a funding platform with the aim of supporting creative projects. Since May 2009, over $350 milion dol-lars have been pledged by more than 2,5 million people, making possible the realisation of 30,000 projects. These go from films, books, music to art, design, games... In the majority of the cases much more money than requested is collected: the reason is that contributors receive

something back once the project is rea-lized. This could be the dvd of the movie if the fund raising was for the realization of a movie or a discount on a product if the raising was for the realization of a product.A similar web platform, who is dealing with even more political issues is The point.Like they write in the home page: “ As a consumer, employee, citizen, acti-vist, parent, or whatever, sometimes you

case study Kickstarter, Thepoint, Sellaband

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can’t do things alone - you need the power of many.”Every campaign has a “tipping point” that shows how much money is necessaire to collect for realizing the project. The inte-resting thing about these platforms is that users are really paying just if the tipping point will be reached and this gives more trust to the whole system: people infact are sure that the project will be completed.Another platform that is raising money is Sellaband. In this case they are dealing just with the world of music. It is in fact a service that helps musicians to produce their albums and to promote themselves.

The fans can make a small donation and have the possibility to contribute to the re-alisation of a discographic project receiv-ing in the end the possibility to download the album for free. These three examples are showing how easy is to collect money once projects are well defined having the certainty that they will be completed.This kind of services could be extended to Public Administrations allowing citizens to decide on which projects to invest the public money.

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When we describe participation, we should define which is the space of parti-cipation. It could be the neighborhood, the city, the Country... We have seen earlier some case studies of participation at go-vernamental level (Wethepeople), and others at local level.It was then evident that the success of the services really relys on the relation that exist between citizens and public Admi-nistrations. If this link is missing or weak these services won’t bring the expected result: this was clear in the examples of Impossible living and Darsena pioniera.

The majority of the existing services that try to reduce the distance between people and politcs, are working at local level. It is quite understandable because the more people the platform involves, the more complex the system should be. Wethepeople was a good example of how it is possible to create a connection be-tween Government and citizens on a big level, involving one entire Country. Of course for complexity reasons, the higher

the number of people involved is, the less deep the discussion can go. Many services instead are concentrating on the local level, considering the city or the neighborhood. This is because it is easier to control smaller areas and also because citizens feel strongly the prob-lems they have around in the places where they live the everyday life and they want to share them. The fact that in Italy the turn-out for municipal elections is higher than the one of the the general elections, it is a sign that shows the big attachment of citizens to local issues.Like we have seen earlier, the designer can have great impact for the “implemen-tation of smart cities policies” (Margolin) and the use of technology can help this process of renewal of politics and demo-cratic systems. At the same time it should be clear that the web is just one tool and like explained by Chadwick, it is important to create an “Hy-bridation” between old and new systems. The web infact has a big potential but if left alone won’t bring to any good result.

2.4 Conclusions

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Paul Ginsborg in his book “Democracy” defines the three actors that should cre-ate a new “system of connection”: fami-lies, civil society and democratic State. These connections should “shake families out of their passivity, who through their in-telligence and self-discipline help civil so-ciety to grow, who takes an active part in democratic politics”The civil society, that stays in the middle between private life and the State, in the last 2 decays is growing with many volun-tary organisations and social movements. There is a parallelism between the actual situation and the one of the 70’s. Back then in Europe there was a mobi-lisation that brought for example to the creation of neighborhood councils but this pressure of the civil society anyway didn’t bring to any big transformation in the political system. Right now this phase is happening again but this time the power of the internet makes easier the spreading of ideas and the Arab spring attests how this historical moment is different form the one of the 70’s.Ginsborg identifies two yardsticks than are fundamental for the creation of a new political system:• The creation of active citizens who wish to debate with politicians and administra-

tors.• The change of politicians’ behaviour with a cultural transformation of the political class.These two variables should work together for the definition of a new modern system in which civil society and local Govern-ment are well combined.Modern technologies have the possibili-ties to make the participation of the citi-zens easier but difficulty they can replace completely the face to face meetings: like President Napolitano said, the miracle is not in the technology but in the way we use it. We are living a turning point that Norber-to Bobbio defines with a simple formula: “from the democratization of the State to the democratisation of the society”.Designers can be a big resource for the definition of this new democratiation of the society, finding an “Hybridation” bewteen the old politics and the new requests and needs of the civil society.

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I narrowed down the space of participa-tion to a Municipal level. I chose the city of Monza for the defini-tion of my project and in this chapter I will present how the city is dealing with partici-pation and how participation was the key issue during last elections.I will also present how the Municipality of Monza is structured, analysing the oppor-tunities for the creation of a new participa-tory system.

Chapter 3

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Monza and participation

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As we have seen earlier, we need to de-fine the space of participation. In my thesis I focus on the local level, in particular I will design a service system to improve the participation in the city of Monza.I chose to work at municipal level because I believe that the lack of participatory cul-ture in Italy forces to start from small (lo-cal level) before reaching the big (national level).In addition to this consideration, I believe that citizens have a greater ease and in-terest in discussing the problems they ex-perience daily in their city.

I then decided to choose the City of Mon-za for several reasons:

• It is a city with a population in between a small town and a big city (120,000 in-habitants). It is usually easier to organize participatory policy when the number of citizens is not too high, using participatory tools in a consistent manner. When the number of inhabitants is very high, usually

participatory tools are used just on key is-sues and specific circumstances. Monza is located half way and this can offer the possibility to develop a structured and continuous participatory system also in a medium size city.

• It is a city with some examples of par-ticipation in the past: Monza was the first Italian city that in the 70’s adopted the neighborhood committees with the aim of involving citizens in the decision-making process.

• The new administration defined par-ticipation like the priority for Monza. This gives the opportunity to define and design a new participatory system.

• I come from Monza, I know very well the city because I have always lived there and I have worked as a volunteer during some of the last elections.

3.1 Introduction Monza and participation

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Monza is the third-largest city in Lombardy and the most important economic and in-dustrial city of the Brianza area. It is a city with over 120,000 inhabitants located few kilometers far from Milano.Monza has a long history with the pre-sence of Roman ruins that in the 3rd cen-tury B.C founded this village known with the name Modicia.The city became important during Longo-bards time when queen Theodelinda built the palatine chapel, now joined to the Ca-thedral of the city. A legend says that the queen in her dreams saw a dove that told her two words: modo (“here” in latin) indi-cating the place where to build the chapel, and the queen answered etiam, (“yes”). The medieval name of Monza, “Modoe-tia”, derives from these two words.Monza is considered the city of the Lon-gobards and many important jewels can be visited in the museum of the cathedral. The most valuable masterpiece is the Iron crown that has been used for the corona-tions of many kings and emperors.The Austrians in 1706 conquered Monza

and brought a sort of rebirth for the City. They renovated the cathedral and the churches and in the end of the 18th cen-tury the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa built the Royal Villa of Monza for her son Ferdinand. It was completed in 1780 by the architect Giuseppe Piermarini who also designed the Royal gardens as Eng-lish landscape gardens.In 1805 Napoleon was crowned king of Italy with the Iron crown and with a decree he created the Royal Park of Monza, co-vering an area of 800 hectares. It is still the largest enclosed park in Europe. Napoleon’s defeat in Waterloo brought Monza under the Hapsburgs sovereign till the unification of Italy. The royal Villa then became the Italian royal palace of the Savoy family. It was particularly used by king Humbert I that unfortunatelly in 1900 has been murdered just outside the palace. After that accident, the palace has been abandoned and just now the restoration of the villa started.In the beginning of the 20th century Mon-

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za was one of the industrial and commer-cial centers of the Italian economy.In 1922 the National Racing Track was in-augurated inside the Park of Monza. It is right now the main attraction of Monza, in-volving many thousands of visitors every year.


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In June 2012 Monza elected a new mayor.I have worked for the electoral campaign in the last 3 local elections in Monza and I noticed the great difference of the last election compared to the previous ones. Common believes about politics and the lack of trust in public insititutions brought to a very poor turnout. Monza had one of the lowest pooling in Italy (44,13% for the second ballot) and the lack of interest was clear during the campaign. It was interesting to notice that many votes shifted from main parties to new move-ments. In particular “movimento cinque stelle” and “cambiamonza”.These two movements have some pecu-liar features that found the approval of citi-zens. Movimento cinque stelle got good results not just in Monza but also in oth-er cities like Parma where even won the elections. The communication that was used by this movement was almost just online and it was underlining the distance of their position from the old politics. They focused on the idea that normal citizens can take the control of the city and they

focused on the importance of involving everyone in the decision-making pro-cesses. They believe in the power of the web with online forums and online ser-vices. Two of the main key points were transparency of the budget and sharing ideas. If the candidate of this movement has been elected, he would have organi-zed public assemblies every 6 months in order to collect ideas and make a report

3.3 Local elections 2012

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of all the decisions taken till that moment. Interesting to note that they got approval not just by youth but also from middle aged citizens: many people infact by voting this movement, wanted to give a warning of political disaffection. Some tools they had in mind to activate the participation of the citizens were referendum without quo-rum and the introduction of a participatory budgeting like in Porto Alegre.

The other movement that got apprecia-tion was “cambiamonza”. They focused on the need to change politics with the in-troduction of younger administrators and younger ideas. The average of the age of the candidates infact was 30 and the av-erage of the other list connected (Primav-eraMonza) was 20 (the youngest in Italy). Like movimento cinque stelle they focused on the importance of using participatory tools for the involvement of citizens, work-ing more on the communication and the digitalization of the services. They orga-nized a different political campaign with the creation of events more than political speeches. These events were innovative and never seen in Monza in the last elec-tions: they created cash mobs, guerilla gardening, art exibitions... These were communicated using facebook and twit-

ter and they were involving young genera-tions that normally don’t get involved so much in political issues. The programme of this list was written after many consul-tations with citizens in some spots called “transparent tables”. The choice to call these places “transparent” underlines the main points of the programme: attention on the trasparency of the decision-mak-ing process, participatory budgeting and creation of tools to involve citizens such as referendum and petitions. The pro-gramme starts with “the civic project we want to realize is completely focused on the listening and on the participation of the citizens”.

The programmes of movimento cinque stelle and cambiamonza are not so diffe-rent and they got the trust of citizens be-cause they put transparency and partici-pation like their priority. From what I have seen during the campaign, it is clear that citizens don’t trust anymore old politics if this doesn’t start focusing on participation and transparency of the budget. These two movements together got more than 15% of approval, and considering the low budget they spent, it is a very conside-rable result.


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Project for Monza was the title of the pro-gramme of Roberto Scanagatti, who after the elections became the new major of Monza.His approach is interesting because he understood that the main point of the cam-paign should have been participation and he chose that issue to be the main point of his programme. His electoral program in-fact starts describing a new vision of the city;

here it is written:

“Participation of citizens is the starting point in order to give trust to people and regain consideration. Participation of citi-zens, with the definition of specific tools, will be one of the innovative elements of the new administration”.

I think the new major of Monza won be-cause, contrarily to other candidates, he focused of the real problem: the need of participation. Like the other movements described earlier, the attention is on trans-parency of the budgeting and on new ways to collect ideas and involve citizens in the decision-making process. This can be considered a good example of the old politics that wants to use a new approach, understanding the difficult situation that public administrations are living now.

The electoral programme was written af-ter the definition of priorities that came out during “Cantieri delle idee” (page 121).

Project for Monza

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Cantieri delle idee (ideas’ building sites) is an example of participatory planning definition that was done in Monza with the aim of collecting ideas for the definition of the electoral programme of the candidate Roberto Scanagatti.

A specific website was created, asking ci-tizens to share their ideas. 12 main cate-gories were defined dealing with 12 dif-

ferent issues of Monza. Ideas were col-lected through different systems: web plat-form, messages written on papers during the electoral meetings and opinions were also written down after normal conversa-tions with citizens.Two candidates of the electoral list sup-porting the candidate mayor were respon-sible for one of the 12 categories. Their job was to read all the ideas and then

case study


Cantieri delle idee

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group them in order to define the priorities for the definition of the programme. They also made interviews and planned meet-ings with citizens. This approach is quite normal during the electoral period, the problem the new ad-ministration is facing now is to continue this participative process and involve all citi-zens and not only the ones with the same political orientation of the mayor. Cantieri delle idee infact are collecting ideas but they are not a complete participatory pro-cess because they are involving just citi-zens with similar political positions. This service was functional in order to write an

electoral programme but it can’t be func-tional in order to collect all the different points of view from citizens.

The mayor confirmed the great success of this approach, even if, looking at the web platform, the ideas collected are not so meaningful and detailed. It is under-standable considering the short time of the process and the limitation of the target of the involved people. Anyway this was a good starting point for the city of Monza and for the new administration. Now the next step is going to be more complex be-cause there is a need of more consistent participatory tools that are not just collect-ing ideas but they are going further.

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When I spoke with the new mayor of Monza Roberto Scanagatti, he told me that communication is the most important phase for a participatory process. Giving this kind of answer, it means that he knows that participation is not just communication.In 2002 Monza was one of the first cities in Italy to have a town councillor dealing with communication.

Right now there are 3 offices dealing with communication:

• Press office (ufficio stampa): it is an ex-ternal office that deals with the relations with media.

• Communication office (ufficio comunica-zione): it is located in the urban center of Monza and deals with public relations and campaigns of communication.

• Communication systems office (ufficio sistemi comunicazione): it is located in the urban center of Monza and deals with

digital communication (website - social networks and multimedia tools).

The tools that are used by these offices in order to communicate with citizens are:

• Magazine “TuaMonza”• Website• MonzaSMS• Public monitors• Newsletter• Facebook• Public manifesto • Local newspapers

It is a magazine that was born in 1995. Since 2002 no changes have been done. It is used just for political - institutional com-munications. It is a bimonthly magazine that is sent to 57.000 families in Monza and in some cases there are special num-bers. The publication is not regular and there isn’t a specific schedule. The costs of delivery are quite high (€ 4000/number)

3.4 Communication in Monza Monza and participation

Magazine “TuaMonza”

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but they return with advertisements. Like underlined also by the mayor, this magazine should be completely rethought. It is mainly presenting the events of the city during the following two months. The last pages are left for reports from each party about the actions of the administra-tion. In some cases the magazine is used to present urban projects that have been approved. It is usually a tool used by the administration to show all the actions the Municipality took. It is a completely in-formative tool without giving the possibi-lity to interact. No voice is given to citizens and their opinions.

It was born in 1999 but till 2003 it was managed by an external office.The website is providing much information about services, news and events.In the home page too many features are present and this makes the netsurfing quite complicated. The website has been visited in 2011 by almost 1.200.000 visi-tors more than half of which are new visi-tors. The website increased very much the number of visits in the last two years. The most clicked pages are: monzaeventi (presenting the events running in the city with more than 100.000 yearly visitors), concorsi e incarichi (presenting contests and job opportunities) and the time tables of the public offices.On the homepage there is the possibility to watch short videos with interviews to the administrators. These videos are also present in youtube but not many citizens are watching them. In the last two years not many videos have been recorded be-cause they require quite many efforts.There are then other websites connected to the main one, including “monzagiova-ni”, a platform thought to give useful infor-mation to young citizens reaching around 25.000 visitors per year.

Web site

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All the 11 websites dealing with the Muni-cipality of Monza collected 1.500.000 vis-its just in the first 6 months of 2012. The website is just in Italian language and, just few information about the Italian grand prix is available in English.

On the website it is also possible to fol-low live the assemblies of the city council, that are usually held once a week in the evenings. Approximately 400-500 people are watching the event live every week. This is a good number that underlines the will of people to get informed about what’s happening in the city.

It is a service that started in 2004. It is a very appreciated service that, by sending a sms, provides the information citizens want to be informed about.This service is free and there are different categories that can be selected. In order of popularity they are: “events”, ”news”, ”road conditions”, “transports”, “children”, “youth”, “emergencies”.At the moment the citizens that registered to this service are more than 11.200, a good number considering the fact that is very difficult to find this service on the website.

Monza SMS


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Recently 25 screens have been displayed in different public spots around the city. They include the urban center, libraries, theatres and other sites of aggregation. These screens are reporting the main news and events that are present in the city including advertisements. In addition to these 25 screens, 7 big screens with the same information have been displayed in external locations, expecially in the center of Monza.These monitors can be good for promoting new services and they get more attention rather than other kinds of communication.

It is written every 15 days and gives infor-mation about news and events in Monza. It is possible to register from the home page of the website.

Public monitors

Newsletter

The number of registred members is in-creasing very much and in just two years the citizens who registered to this service are over 6500.

The page of the Municipality of Monza was born in 2009. Actually there are two pages that are shar-ing the same information. Around 11.000 citizens suscribed to these facebook pag-es. While the previous tools are basicly informing, this new tool allows citizens to interact and communicate. One person of the communication system office is posting every day news, curiosi-ties, events and answers to the citizens’ questions. The users are mostly young citizens but there are also more middle-aged and elderly people than expected. Facebook makes the interaction easier and also helps to involve women. One interesting thing I found is that young people are not using facebook properly, they don’t read well the information pro-vided and they don’t open the links: they see facebook more like a chat and they prefer to ask rather than to read carefully. Many people infact are asking the same questions.

Facebook page

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MonzaNewsletter

MonzaSMS Youtube Facebook

10.000

5.0006500

11.200 10.618

393

Website

Consultations

Unique visitors

News uploaded

Events uploaded

2010 2011

976.125 1.181.565

363.382 629.987

447 782

568 779

+ 21%

+ 73%

+ 75%

+ 37%


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Like I said before, it is also true that face-book is not the best tool to involve peo-ple into a discussion. It is easy to involve people but the conversation can’t go very deep. A forum would work better in this sense but later I will show some attempts of forum that didn’t work like expected in Monza.

The municipality of Monza is printing ma-nifestos that are displayed all around the city. They normal inform citizens about events, exibitions and new services.

Public manifesto

Public manifestos are also informing about the schedule of the the city council assemblies.Public manifestos are good tools to gather the attention of citizens that are just pass-ing by, even though the layout of the Mu-nicipality of Monza is not very appealing and should be re-designed.

In Monza there are two bi-weekly newspa-pers: “Il Cittadino” and “Il giornale di Mon-za”. The first one has a higher circulation with a run of 30.000 copies. Even if these newspapers are not under the control of the Municipality, the Administration uses this tool to promote events and initiatives and inform citizens.

Local newspapers

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If we keep in mind the matryoshka struc-ture of participation that I defined in the first chapter (page 37), we understand that communication is just the beginning of a partecipatory system. Like already said, communication is the most important of the four partecipatory phases (commu-nication, consultation, deliberation, co-governance) but can’t be the only one.Alessia Tronchi (responsable of the com-munication office in Monza) presented me some examples of participation that the Municipality of Monza adopted in the past years.

A project of e-democracy was developed in 2004, winning a competition organized by the Ministery of Innovation for the pro-motion of e-democracy inside Public Ad-ministrations. The project developed by the Municipality of Monza was a web site called “MonzaPartecipa”. The aim of the web site was to give citizens some tools to participate and have voice in the decision making process of the City council.In this web site there are surveys, forums

and the possibility to upload videos. Un-fortunatelly this web platform didn’t work like expected. Alessia Tronchi told me that opening a forum is a mission impossible because it requires many efforts to involve different actors in the discussion. One of the few issues that have been discussed in this platform was the creation of a skatepark. She told me that in the end they got very good outcomes and that the participa-tion worked well but the problem was that it took too much time and energy to find enough competent people to start the dis-cussion. The employees that work on web communication are just 4 and this makes impossible for them to follow many partici-patory processes. She also said that if the topic is too gene-ric, participation is very low. Citizens are in-terested in participation but they are quite lazy: she suggested not to ask for regis-trations and creation of profiles because this step would stop people from partici-pating. It is also true that this experiment was created in 2004 and back then social

3.5 Participation in Monza Monza and participation

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networks like facebook weren’t even used by people, so the idea of profiles was un-known. I personally think that participation needs the creation of profiles, expecially if one of the goals of the participatory processes is to create an active community.The main problem that I found on this online service is that it is very difficult to know about its existence and even on the web site of the Municipality of Monza is not very well communicated.The impression I had was that they don’t want many people to use this tool because then nobody of the Municipality could re-

ally handle these datas. Monzapartecipa was an experiment that didn’t work because it wasn’t clear who was the responsable for the maintenance and the running of the service. It wasn’t clear also how the collected datas and ideas were really affecting the final deci-sions.The communication office doesn’t want to try again this kind of experiment: they told me that forums are now out-of-date and that social networks are the best tools to create a bi-directional dialogue be-tween citizens and the administration. The numbers in fact are showing that many

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citizens in Monza are following the page in facebook. Like I said earlier, facebook and social networks create a good opportunity to get in touch with a wide public, but they can’ t be considered tools designed for partici-patory politics: facebook was created for a different purpose and there are many limitations for a real participatory process. Right now just one person has the job to update the facebook page and there isn’t any structured plan how to answer the questions or the comments of the face-book page. The responsable of the communication office also told me that they decided not to take part to any online service like Co-munichiamo or decorourbano (page 98) because there wouldn’t be any person available who could read and take care of the citizen’s reports.

From the information that I got, it is clear that internet will be the starting point for participatory processes but the problem is that right now nobody has planned any system with the definition of the roles and responsabilities.The mayor told me that he would like to transform completely the communication of the Municipality and that the creation of

a new participatory system is crucial. He said this won’t be easy because the struc-ture of the Municipality is quite rigid and employees are not culturally open to such a big change but this is the priority of the Administration.Monzapartecipa never really worked and never involved many citizens in the dis-cussions and for this reason it hasn’t been used for some time. Recently the new ad-ministration opened a new discussion for gathering ideas for the requalification of an area of Monza (page 134).Surprisingly (or not) this time many peo-ple participated. This proves that com-pared to few years ago citizens are much more confident with technology and that the wish of participation is increasing. It is also true that this time the communication of this service was higher with many post-ers spread around the city inviting people to participate.

The actual Administration is then using posters also for advertise off-line partici-patory meetings. The problem of the meet-ings that I attended, was that they were held after the Administration had already taken a decision or then these meetings were dealing with too generic issues.This is not a real participation and Sherry


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Arnstein would call this “tokenism”.

Another instrument that the Administration of Monza used in the past and that now the new mayor would like to re-introduce is social budgeting. The social budgeting is a statement made by the mayor that states how the Admin-istration planned to invest the resources of the Municipality. Every year one report compares the intentions of the Adminis-tration with the results achieved, allowing citizens to judge the coherence of the Ad-ministration. This can’t really be conside-red as a participatory process but it could become so. In order to do that, it is impor-tant to create a dialogue with citizens for the definition of their priorities.The mayor told me that in 2007 the Mu-nicipality of Monza gave an amount of money to each neighborhood committee and these were free to decide which pro-jects to finance. Unfortunatelly the experi-ment didn’t bring any good result in terms of participation because the neighborhood committees were just “prosthesis” of the City council. In any case, the mayor expressed interest in re-apply this logic, after the definition of a more structured participation and the definition of the new district committees.

In conclusion, I could say that Monza never experienced a real participatory process that worked well. Anyway recently the case of MonzaParte-cipa can be considered as an experiment that has some good aspects that should be taken into consideration for the develop-ment of a new participatory system.

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In 2011 the former Administration of Mon-za was arranging some changes to the PGT (Piano Governo Territorio), an ur-banistic instrument that defines the urban planning of the city. After the definition of the draft of the new plan, citizens had 30 days to consult this document inside the City hall. It is a document very complex that requires many competences to be un-derstood by normal citizens.

During these 30 days, citizens could sug-gest some changes that would be then discussed by the Administration.In 2011 many environmentalist associa-tions reacted against the draft that was planning the possibility to build residential houses in a big green area of Monza. The activism of these associations brought a great involvement of many citizens that organized protests against the Adminis-tration. The participation of the citizens was so high that in the end the draft hasn’t been approved (not for lack of wish but for lack of time) and the deaf behaviour of the Administration didn’t reach the ap-provement of the citizens.The associations and the citizens that pro-tested against the new draft of PGT had a crucial role for the missed approval of the document and this was a clear signal that they sent to the Administration. It is not a coincidence that few months later the main point of the electoral cam-paign was participation and how to give voice to citizens in the decision-making processes.

PGT Monza and participation

133

In July 2012 the new Administration used the platform “Monzapartecipa” to collect ideas for the requalification of Viale Lom-bardia. On the web platform it is possible to con-sult the project that some years ago won the contest for the requalification of the area and it is possible to add ideas and comments.The project infact is not completely de-

fined and the public Administration wants to take into consideration the ideas of the citizens. In addition to this, the Administra-tion also met the citizens during a public meeting to discuss about the future of the district. The mayor told me that the event was very successful and that the web plat-form gathered many ideas and comments that will be considered for the implemen-tation of the final project.

case study Monza partecipa: viale Lombardia

134



Anyway Alessia Tronchi (responsable of the communication office) told me that it was good to see many people participat-ing but at the same time the web platform still has a big problem: there is nobody that is sharing official information explain-ing that almost all the ideas that were col-lected are impossible to be realized be-cause of many limitations and rules that haven’t been explained to citizens.The main concern is that, if all the ideas that have been collected are not taken into consideration, citizens will not trust anymore this participatory process and won’t use anymore the web platform.

This makes me think that it is important that someone from the Administration with the right competences answers and ex-plains why the ideas are not realizable and which are the limitations. In other words there should more dialogue because par-ticipation is not just collecting ideas.

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Some decays ago, politics wasn’t con-sidering participatory tools and systems. Things changed in the 70’s with the pro-tests of citizens asking for more power in the decision-making processes. Monza in the 70’s took some innovative positions: it was the first city in Italy that allowed 18 years old citizens to vote and it was the first city that created the “neighborhood com-mittees”. These were supposed to listen to the needs of the citizens in each neigh-borhood writing then reports for the Public Administration. Unfortunatelly these ex-periments didn’t work well because these committees instead of staying external to politics, they have been absorbed by poli-tics. The institutionalisation of these com-mittees turned them into a “second voice” of the Administration, forgetting the main purpose of their creation.During my interview with the mayor Ro-berto Scanagatti, he claimed that these neighborhood committees are caught be-tween the devil and the deep blue see, where the devil represents the Public Ad-ministration and the deep blue see repre-

sents the needs of the citizens.The illustration at page 137 represents the structure of the Municipality of Monza until 2012.Inside the Municipality there are various municipal offices that are indipendent from the change on the Administrations: they have around 1000 employees and they make the Municipality work. The City Council instead changes every 5 years and it is composed by elected coun-cillors, assessors that are the responsable for different subject areas, and the mayor.Some councillors take then part to the “Board’s committees”. Right now there are 4 board’s committees that discuss about 4 different main sub-jects and they define the priority settings. External to the city council, there are the Committees of the Parties, composed by people that weren’t elected in the elec-tions and that help their parties to think about the definition of propositions. They have a similar role to the Board’s commit-tees even though they don’t have any in-stitutional role.

3.6 System in Monza

136



ASSESSORS

MAYOR

BOARD’SCOMMITTEESCITY COUNCIL

NEIGHBORHOODCOMMITTEESPOLITICAL PARTIES

MUNICIPAL OFFICES

COMMITTEES/ASSOCIATIONS

MUNICIPALITY OF MONZA

CITIZENS

PARTIES’COMMITTEES

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Other institutions that are part of the Mu-nicipality are the neighborhood commit-tees. As mentioned earlier, they should represent the link between the Adminis-tration and citizens; the members that are composing these committees are coming from the different parties of the City Coun-cil and they are elected with regular elec-tions. This is the reason why citizens don’t see the difference between politicians elected in the the City Council and the ones elect-ed in the neighborhood committees.

Till 2012 Monza had 5 neighborhood com-mittees, located in 5 different geographi-cal areas of che city. The structure of the Municipality changed in 2012 when a national regulation of spending review brought to the abolition of the neighborhood committees.This change in the structure of the Munici-pality removed the only existing link be-tween citizens and the Public Administra-tion. The mayor Scanagatti told me that it is crucial to define a new structure that in his electoral programme he called “District council” that will replace the neighborhood committee and will increase the participa-tion. The structure of these district coun-cils is not yet defined but the idea is to

have a depoliticized organism that will really fill the gap between citizens and ad-ministrators.

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3.7 SWOT Analysis Monza and participation

After all the information that I collected, I arrived to the conclusion that it is crucial to design a new participatory system with the definition of new political Institutions. I created a SWOT analysis that will help me to define the design brief for my pro-ject. This analysis will take into considera-tion which are the strenghts, the weak-nesses, the opportunities and the threats that the Municipality of Monza could have in facing a new participatory system. I did the SWOT analysis quite early in the process because I believe this will help me defining a more feasible project.

The biggest strengths that a new partici-patory system could bring are the reduc-tion of the the gap between citizens and politics and the creation of a new sense of community and public awareness.Other good aspects that support the crea-tion of this new system are the request of more participation that is spreading in many democratic Countries with some good case studies coming from all over the world.

Lastly, a strenght of this system is that it will create a major approval for Adminis-trations that are working well.

The biggest weaknesses that such a big change could face are the rigid and cultur-ally close-minded attitude of the Municipal employees and the lack of participatory culture of citizens as well. In fact it is not easy to change the disaffection for politics in public involvement. Other aspects that should be taken into consideration are the costs, the efforts and the major time that a partecipatory process requires compared to representative processes.In this case, it is important to define a good balance between effectiveness and costs.Opportunities and threats are instead con-sidering external factors that can facilitate or obstruct the new participatory system.Like I mentioned earlier, the main oppor-tunity that I found is the necessity to re-define new district committees after the abolition of the neighborhood committees. This event can be the starting point for the re-definition of the Municipal offices and

139

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STRENGHTS WEAKNESSES

OPPORTUNITIES THREATS

People asking for major participation

Good case studies from other Cities and Countries

Reducing the gap between citizens and politics

Major approval for good Administra-tions

Creation of a sense of community and more awareness.

Rigid and culturally close-minded employees in Municiaplity

Lack of participatory culture of citizens

Costs and complexity

Time and e�orts needed

Necessity to dene new district committees

Good attitude of the Administration

External connections that can give more visibility to the system

Good involvements of citizens

Wish of the the Administration to renew the communication

Lack of trust by citizens.

Not appealing and engaging

Not continuos process in time and not multitarget

Lack of active participation of the administration

Lack of continuos participation of citizens

public Institutions. Contemporaneously, there is a good atti-tude shown from the new Administration that considers the definition of a participa-tory system like the first priority for Monza.Other external factors that can effect the success of the new system are the wish of the Administration to renew the offices of communication and the possibility to involve also external stakeholders during the participatory process.

The threats of the new system are gene-rally linked to the unpredictability of the participation: there could be lack of trust from the citizens if the system is not really participatory. In addition to this there could be lack of continuity of the process that decreases the wish to participate. The lack of continuity could come from the citi-zens but also from the Administration like it happened with “MonzaPartecipa”.

The SWOT analysis is useful because it helps defining the key points for the defini-tion of the project brief.All the 4 categories are important and if the project doesn’t consider all these aspects, it won’t work: it is in fact crucial to consider both negative and positive aspects.The negative aspects are challenges that


help for the definition of a feasible project. Defining and overcoming these weak-nesses and threats will give an extra value to the final project.It is then very important to take advantage from all the positive aspects expecially from the opportunities that the new sys-tem could have.

In the next chapter I will present how this analysis brought to the definition of the design brief and to the final project.

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142142

Starting from the SWOT analysis, in this chapter I present how the design brief evolved into my final project.I show how the system in Monza will change and which new actors will be in-volved in the participatory processes.I will present the project throught the 4 phases of participation: communication, consultation, deliberation and co-govern-ance, underlining the link between online and offline tools.

Chapter 4

Project

1431

144


As we have seen in the first chapters, de-mocracy sounds easy but it is a very com-plex system. This is the reason why all the changes in democracy took many years to be developed, even the simple ones and also participatory democracy requires time to be well structured. It is important to understand that we are dealing with a complex issue and if we want to succeed we need to create a very simple system that is not revolutionizing democracy completely. We can say that the reasons why political system is in trou-ble are simple but the political system is complex and for this reason the respons-es that should be given to overcome the problem must be simple.

Participatory politics like I already said, it is not a substitute for representative de-mocracy but it is an integration. This inte-gration can’t be done if there isn’t the col-

laboration of the main two actors involved: electors and elected or in general citizens and their representatives. This was clear in some of the case studies that I present-ed in chapter 2 where many services didn’t work because of the the lack of presence of one of these two actors. Monza has the possibility to have this inte-gration because of the positive attitude of the Administration to work on participation and involvement of citizens.

Another good opportunity that came out from the SWOT analysis, is the need to redefine the district committees.It is important to define which were the problems of the previous neighborhood committes and how the new ones can bring real improvements. After speaking with the mayor, I understood that the main problems were two:

• They were paid institutions that were spending quite much public money.

4.1 From SWOT to design brief Project

Easy Participatory System

Integration electors and elected

Less division in districts

145

• They didn’t really involve people to par-ticipate but they were just prosthesis of the City Council spread in the 5 districts of Monza.

I would also define another problem that I saw: the configurations of the five districts were quite questionable and people didn’t feel to belong to any of those. That brought to the failure of the neigh-borhood committes that in the end were just political institutions and not anymore indipendent from the City Council.

In my project, I want District committees to have a big role in the participatory pro-cess and for this reason they should be quite different from the previous neighbor-hood committes: participants shouldn’t be paid and the distincition of the 5 districts of Monza should become less evident. In my project in fact I will bring the atten-tion to the issues more than on the geo-graphical locations because in my opinion every space of the City is not belonging just to that specific district but it belongs to everyone and every citizen should have the possibility to participate.This consideration comes also from the evidence that the definition of the five dis-tricts in Monza didn’t work.

One weakness that I found in the defini-tion of a new participatory system is the lack of participatory culture inside the Mu-nicipality of Monza. When I was gathering information for the definition of my project, I realized that some people have this wish to renew the system, but there are not enough people to do it. I found incredible that there are three offices working on communication that don’t communicate within each other. For this reason I think the first step should be the redefinition of the offices dealing with communication: right now the Press office is managed by an external agency, while the other two (Communication office and Communication systems office) are internal.In my opinion the internal offices should become just one and there should be inte-gration between the external agency and the internal office. This integration should bring to the definition of a new office deal-ing with participation. Later I will present these aspects in more details (page 156).

The lack of participatory culture anyway is

Define new office of participation

Appealing and friendly

146


present also among citizens. It is true that in the last few years the web helped them to be more friendly with par-ticipation but at the same time politics has lost credibility and this makes participation more difficult using traditional channels. The new system should then be very appealing and should be perceived like something new and friendly. Politics is usually considered unfriendly and far from citizens’ needs, and for this reason the new system should appear like the oppo-site, like a real change, otherwise won’t gain the trust of people.

Internet and the web are crucial for spreading participation because they help to make participation easier, faster and more appealing. At the same time participation can’t ex-clude people and for this reason online and offline tools should run well together. Like I presented in the first chapter, there are many variables that influence the choice of the participatory tools but at the end it is important that all the categories of people are included. Online and offline tools must co-exist: the online tools work better on the quantitative

side because information can be spread easily, while the offline tools work better on the qualitative side. The more complex the issue is, the more there is the need of a qualitative process.

We have also seen some case studies (including the service “Monzapartecipa”) showing that, if the system is not continu-ous, people stop being involved and don’t participate anymore. It is crucial to have well-defined deadlines and reports that are showing that the pro-cess is working. In any moment citizens should be able to understand at which stage the process is: in other words, the system should be systematic.

Another key-issue that I found is the need of transparency: disillusion with politics is mostly due to lack of transparency and this brings to the common belief that all politicians are the same and that there is no possibility to have a real voice in the decision-making processes.The web can help to make all the pro-cesses more transparent and I think this

Project

Online and offline co-existing

Continuous and systematic

Transparency of the processes

147

shouldn’t just include the final delibera-tions but should include also all the steps of the processes, from the starting point till the end. In my new system transparency of the processes will be crucial because the main goal of my project is to define a participatory system that really reduces the gap with politics and this goal would be unreachable if the system doesn’t an-swer the need of transparency.

In order to reach that goal, I would like to create a real connection between citizens and their representatives. During the development of my project, I had the chance to speak with some city councilors and I realized how different they are from the common belief: I saw a lot of passion in the job they are doing and I would like to make this more visible. The interaction between citizens and their rep-resentatives right now is missing but it is a crucial step for the definition of the new participatory system; at the same time this interaction can bring more appreciation to the Administration and can really reduce the distance with politics. Monza is a city with a size that makes this interaction possible, building a stronger

sense of community.

The last important aspect that I want to be part of my project, is the possibility for citi-zens to have more voice in the definition of the agenda of the City Council. During the last electoral campaign I rea-lized that people think politicians are not discussing the real important issues of the City.I would like my project to give the possi-bility for citizens to start discussions and the most popular ones will then activate the participatory process forcing the City Council to be part of the discussion. In this way the agenda of the City Council can be influenced by the priorites defined by the citizens.

Interaction with representatives

Citizens can define the priorities

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Project

149

The new participatory system should be easy and intuitive

Less importance to the geographical districts

Definition of a new office of participation

The new system should be appealing and friendly

Design for all: online and offline tools should coexist

The system should be continuous in time and systematic

Any phase of the system should be transparent

Interaction between citizens and their representatives

Integration between electors and elected

Citizens can define the priorities and set the agenda of the City Council

Design brief

Like already said, one of the opportunities that must be taken into consideration, is the definition of the new district commit-tees.Considering that the main problem of the previous neighborhood committees was the lack of participation, I started defining a new system in which the new commit-tees will have the most important role in the new participatory process.Like you can see in the illustration on the next page, I represented how the new sys-tem could become in Monza and you can compare it with the old one (page 137).The new participatory system involves more actors in the participatory process. In the old neighborhood committees in fact the actors involved were just the com-mittees, a small number of citizens and the city Council. In my new system I want to involve more citizens and I want to create a more direct relation between them, city councillors and the new office of participation. I also want to give the possibility to exter-nal professionalisms to be part of the par-

ticipatory processes.

As you can see in the illustration, my sys-tem works in three main steps and I used some symbols to define them. Later these symbols will be explained because they are part of the project.

The first stage of the process is just among citizens. It is based on a web platform that makes easier and faster sharing ideas and writing comments.This platform will be described in the next pages and it is the starting point of the par-ticipatory processes, defining the priorities of the citizens. This web platform gives also the possibility to citizens to check all the steps of the participatory process.I took inspiration from “cantieri delle idee” (page 121), even though I designed a friendlier and more engaging system.It doesn’t focus anymore on the districts of Monza, but it is a “virtual square”, where people can have voice in the definition of

4.2 The new system in Monza

Stage 1

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Project

ASSESSORS

MAYOR

BOARD’SCOMMITTEESCITY COUNCIL

PARTIES’COMMITTEESPOLITICAL PARTIES

MUNICIPAL OFFICES

COMMITTEES/ASSOCIATIONS

MUNICIPALITY OF MONZA

CITIZENS

OFFICE OF PARTICIPATION

EXTERNAL PROFESSIONALISMS

151

Like already mentioned earlier, the second stage of the process is mainly offline. This is the core of the process because, as you can see from the illustration at page 151, it is the joining between citizens and Munici-pality. This stage has the same function of the old neighborhood committees but it involves more actors and focuses more on participation.Very important at this stage is the office of participation that has the duty of making the whole process working.Just the priorities that has been definied by citizens will arrive to this second stage; here public meetings gives the possibi-lity to discuss about these issues. A pro-ject team will be defined by a facilitator, including citizens, city councilors and also external professionalisms. The aim of this second stage is to discuss the priorities of the citizens in a more qualitative way. The city councilor will become then the meeting pointduring stage 3.

The last stage of the participatory process is just among the Municipality. It doesn’t involve just the City Council but

the priorities to discuss about.On the web platform citizens can also vote the citizens’ deliberations (stage 2) and the city Council’s ones (stage 3).Like I said earlier, one of the key aspects of my project is the integration between online and offline, and for this reason the deliberative process will integrate these two parts. I will speak about this integra-tion in paragraph 4.8 (page 193).The web platform is used to define issues that are relevant to people, these issues will be then discussed in an offline pro-cess (stage 2), and then citizens will vote the deliberations on the web.The reason why I mixed the channels are two:• Web platform is more suitable to involve many people and to collect ideas and comments and it is also a very cheap way for voting; at the same time it is not a good tool for developing a discussion. For this reason the qualitative part of the process is kept offline. This is also based on the re-sults of the analysis I did in the first chapter studying the different participatory tools.• Participation should be designed for all citizens and using just online tools would exclude older people, while using just of-fline tools would reduce the number of participants and increase the costs.

Stage 2

Stage 3

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also the office of participation that will have a very important role.Compared with the old system, citizens are not completely excluded from this stage of the process, but they can follow and comment the discussions and the evolution of the participatory process on the web platform. In this way they can really see the conti-nuity of the process and they can check the actions of the Administration.Citizens can also comment and vote the final city Council’s deliberations and cer-tify if the citizens’ deliberations have been taken into consideration or not.

For the survival of the system, it is crucial that the Administration is not deaf and it is able to communicate and explain well the reasons behind every deliberation.

It is important to underline that this new system is not questioning representative democracy but it is simply giving an an-swer to the need of citizens, defining a new process in which people are more ac-tive and more trustful in their representa-tives.

Project

153

4.3 Tuttifrutti

The new participatory system I designed is called Tuttifrutti.

The name I chose is strictly linked to the main feature of the new system I designed.The historian Paul Ginsborg underlines the need of giving shape to participatory democracy. For me this kind of shape should be also visibile and not just theo-retical and I found that the shape of the tree could define well the idea of the par-ticipatory politics we need right now.I said earlier that the new system should be appealing and perceived like some-thing friendly and new. Politics right now is perceived like something old and un-friendly, and for this reason I created this bucolic representation of politics, some-thing that appears like a real change, with the aim of gaining the trust of people.In particular I chose to represent the sys-tem with a fruit tree, because I found many connections between the tree and the vi-sion of a new politics.

First of all the tree is something that lives and, if all the actors involved in the system are not taking care of the tree, it will die showing the inefficiency of the process.Then, if the fruit tree is well coltivated, it can give fruits. This is also my vision of participatory politics: if all the actors are working well together, the system will ge-nerate visible results. The slogan that infact I chose is:

The logo is very simple and the red square with the green leaf represents a stylized fruit. I chose to use red, white and green like the main colors of all the web platform and the communication because they are the colors of the Italian flag. The choice of the red square containing the letter “T”, is then creating an easy con-nection with the smartphone application that the system will have.

Naming

fruitful participation in Monza

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Project

In the previous pages I presented the main stages of the system, defining the actors that are involved in each of them.Now I will present more in details which are the steps of this new participatory ser-vice system and how it works.There are 5 main steps and they will be represented with a symbol related to the participatory tree.Some of these steps are offline but all of them are anyway present in the web plat-form that in this way becomes the visible part of the new system.

The main steps of tuttifrutti

The first step uses the symbol of a leaf. In the illustration below, you can see the participatory tree that will be the core of the web platform.Each leaf represents an open discussion and during this first step, citizens can read, share, comment ideas and open new dis-cussions.

The most popular ideas and discussions, will generate public meetings that will be

Step 1

Step 2

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organized by the office of participation. These public meetings will then generate smaller teams of people that will continue the discussions in a more qualitative way. These teams will be selected by the facili-tator, involving citizens, one city councillor and possibly also external professiona-lisms. Citizens can follow the evolution of the discussions on the web platform and can comment.

Once the teams have defined one delibe-ration, this will be posted online. The fruits that are present on the participatory tree represents the final deliberations. All the citizens can vote and comment them. There are just two weeks of time for voting and there is a quorum of 150 votes.

If the voting reached the quorum, the de-liberation will be discussed during the City Council and the evolution of the discus-sions will be posted on the web platform giving citizens the possibility to comment the positions taken from the City Council.In this way citizens can really have voice in the definition of the priorities of the city.

Step 3

Step 4

Once the City Council has finished the discussion phase and arrived to a final deliberation, this will be uploaded online. Citizens can vote the actions of the Ad-ministration, expressing appreciation or disapproval for how the participatory pro-cess was completed.

A key role in the whole process is the one of the office of participation.At the moment this office doesn’t exist and its definition should be the first step for the realization of the new system.The communication office and communi-cation systems office should become just one and this new office should create a partnership with an external agency. The reason is that right now the Municipality of Monza doesn’t have enough experience to deal this issue alone.The Municipality of Monza has already some agreements with external agencies, so this wouldn’t be anything new (for ex-ample the Press office is managed by an external agency). This new office of participation should be composed by external facilitators, com-

Step 5

The office of participation

External agency

Communicationo�ce of Monza

O�ce of Participation

CommunicationExperts

Facilitators

Designers

ComputerExperts

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Project

puter experts, designers and by inter-nal employees of the communication of-fice that can share the bigger knowledge about the reality of Monza. These different professionalisms are used during the different steps of the partecipa-tory process. In the early stage, computer experts and graphic designers will create the web plat-form. Internal communication experts will help them for the promotion of the new system. Once the platform is ready, the municipal employees and the facilitators will read the new discussions made by citizens. Once some of them become popular with many citizens involved in the discussion, fa-cilitators and internal employees will orga-

nize participatory meetings.In particular, facilitators are present dur-ing the meetings and they will define the teams that are going to continue the dis-cussions. Facilitators and Municipal employees work together: the first ones are the responsa-bles of the teams, while the second ones will provide facilitators informations useful for the development of the process.Designers could then help facilitators rea-lizing illustrations representing the out-comes of the teams’ deliberations if the project requires a visual support.Web experts during the whole process up-date the web platform, the facebook page and the smart phone application and they also prepare the newsletters that will be

External agency

Communicationo�ce of Monza

O�ce of Participation

CommunicationExperts

Facilitators

Designers

ComputerExperts

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The value proposition of the new system will appear on the home page of the web-platform: “Giving citizens a way to deliberate ideas and have voice in the decision-making process of the City.

sent to the registered members. Commu-nication employees will then prepare the reports that will be regularly published on the newspapers and on the magazine of Monza. They will also provide the City Council a final report, more detailed than the public ones.This office of participation is crucial and all the employees should share infor-mation and work together like a team.If this doesn’t happen, the participatory system can’t succeed and we would face similar problems to those we have today.

The new value proposition

www.tuttifruttimonza.it

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676

Share ideas Develope projects Deliberate and vote Follow Administration Final voting

Step 1

Check and comment citizens’ ideas.You can open new discussions, adding one leaf on the partecipatory tree.

The most commented ideas will generate public participatory meetings. You can take part to a project group or follow online the evolution of the projects.

Once citizens’ projects are ready, you can read the deliberations voting and adding your comments.

After the votings, citizens’ projects will be discussed by the City Council. Follow the evolution of the discussions and add your comments.

Once the City Council will �nish the phase of discussion, a �nal deliberation will be uploaded. Citizens can vote the actions of the Administration.

Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Step 5

Check open discussions Check next meetingFollow open projects

Read and vote citizens’ Check discussions in Vote �nal City Council

Giving citizens a way to deliberate ideas and have voice in the decision-making process of the City.

What is tuttifrutti? How does it work? Register

News Participatory tree Gathered fruits RecordMap

City Council deliberationsdeliberations

Community

CITIZENS CITY COUNCIL

The web platform helps citizens to have voice in the selection of the priorities, in the deliberation and in the definition of the

political Agenda of the City Council. This integration between citizens and the City Council is visibile on the web platform and is underlined with the use of two dif-ferent colors: the green is the color that represents the citizens while the red re-presents the Administration. The reason to use two different colors, is to facilitate citizens in understanding which are their duties and which the ones of the Administration inside a common system.

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Project

4.4 Communication Let’ s now see how Tuttifrutti works, con-sidering the 4 main phases of participation that I defined in the first chapter.I will start with the first phase that is com-munication. Like already said, it is the most crucial one because the whole pro-cess doesn’t even start if it is not well co-municated. I defined three steps for the communica-tion of Tuttifrutti:

• Communication of the new system.• Communication of the process.• Communication of the outcomes.

The communication in general will be managed by municipal communication experts, computer experts and designers.All these people will work together like a team and they have to follow all the phas-es of the participatory process. The process is evolving very quickly, so it is crucial that the office of participation is working well, sharing information also with the group of facilitators and keeping a constant connection with the City Council.

The first step is the one to promote the new participatory system. In this case we should invite citizens to go online because this is the first requirement for the functioning of the whole process.For this phase, the office of Communica-tion, should use traditional channels like public posters, public monitors, depliants, and traditional institutional mail.Newspapers and the Magazine “TuaMon-za” are also good tools to give more in-formation about the new system and they are more effective instruments of commu-nication.The most important tool that can help in promoting the new participatory system to a wide public is the web.The website of Monza should make the new system visibile on the homepage, but more than the website of the Municipal-ity, facebook can be used to spread ef-fectively the voice and create the “word of mouth” effect, with many people signing to the facebook page.

Communication of the new system

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Right now more than 11.000 citizens signed the page of the Municipality of Monza in facebook, and these people can receive an invitation to join the new page.Also the almost 12.000 citizens who signed the MonzaSMS service can re-ceive one SMS inviting them to register to the new service system.Public posters and public monitors are also good tools to make the new system more visible but they are not good to de-liver much information, that’s why these tools should just give some slogans trying to engage people stimulating their curio-sity of knowing more about Tuttifrutti.

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One of the priorities of the Administration of Monza, is to involve citizens in the dicision-making process.Political disa�ection is increasing and citizens are an important alarm bell that makes visible the need of a new concept of Politics.The Municipality of Monza answered to this need with the creation of a new participatory system called Tuttifrutti. The aim of this new system, is connecting citizens with the city Council, working together in a

shared deliberative process. The starting point is a web platform that collect citizens’ ideas. The most popular ideas will generate then public meetings and project teams composed by citizens and City council-lors that will work together on the de�nition of a solution. In this way citizens can decide the priorities for Monza and set the agenda of the City Council that will deliberate a �nal decision taking into considera-tion the whole participatory process.

Participatorydemocracy

in MonzaAssessorato ai Sistemi InformaticiAssessorato alla Comunicazione

A new concept of politics

Participatory tree Registration

The participatory tree is a virtual tree that will show all the participatory processes: the branches are the dierent subjects, the leaves are the ideas, the �ow-ers are the projects and in progress and the fruits the �nal deliberations to vote.

Registration is online at www.tuttifruttimonza.it1000 registred citizens are required in order to start the new system and the survival of the participatory plant is a duty of both citizens and administrators.

Get in touch

Citizens can follow the latest news directly from the web platform but also from other tools:

Facebook and twitter pages <tuttifruttimonza> Smartphone application <tuttifruttimonza> “Il cittadino” newspaper

Requali�cation viale Lomabrdia

20 February 2013 21:00

urban planning

www.tuttifruttimonza.it/news

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News Participatory tree Gathered fruits RecordMap Community

Check open discussions

Metro and/or monorail in Monza?19 February 2013

transportationt t ti

CITIZENS: Latest news from participatory tree

NEW discussion

NEW discussionExtend the timetables of libraries19 February 2013

youth politicsNEW discussion

What to do with the old racetrack inside the park?18 February2013

park and royal villaProject in progress

NEW discussionFree Wi-Fi in the center of Monza18 February 2013

youth politicsVOTE CITIZENS’ PROPOSITION

Can we move the market from the central square?F b

urban planningNEW discussion

Check open discussions

ADMINISTRATION: Latest news from the gathered fruits

New site for musical school Appiani18 Febraury 2013

cultureVOTE FINAL DELIBERATION

NEW discussionBike sharing in Monza18 February2013

road systemtransportation

Discussion in progress

Urban orto in old slaughterhouse6 F b

urban planningDiscussion in progress

Vote till 4 March

NEXT PUBLIC MEETINGS

Urban centerNew parking under boschetti reali

21 February 2013 21:00

urban planning

City center 3

Project

Another type of communication is then required when the process has already started and citizens got used to the web platform.A big amount of datas will be present on the web platform: new discussions, com-ments, advertisments of public meetings, deliberations...etc etc (image below).

The participatory plant will come up when Tuttifrutti reaches 1000 members.

687

Invite other citizens to participate!

Communication of the process

161

Another important aspect of this web plat-form is that it should involve a big number of citizens otherwise it can’t really work and we should avoid the risk to create an “oligarchic system”.For this reason I think a minimum num-ber of registered users is required to make the platform working and I estimated this number in 1000 citizens.

In the homepage I imagine a window that invites citizens to participate and share the platform with facebook and twitter in order to reach the number of 1000 registered citizens necessary to release the system.

All this information should be easily ac-cessible and should be regularly com-municated with the same tools, giving the system a sort of continuity.This time some of the tools used for the first step of communication are not suita-ble anymore (posters or traditional mail).In this case weekly newsletters, the bi-weekly newspaper of the city “Il Citta-dino” and social networks are good tools to commmunicate easily the latest news. Communication must be online and offline because they core part of the participa-tory process is offline and must involve also people that are not using the web

platform.The web platform itself has one part dedi-cated to the latest news (image page 161).Guided by the two main colors (green and red), citizens can easily read all the latest news from the citizens (open discussions, projects and deliberations) and from the City Council (open discussions and final deliberations). There is then also informa-tion about the next participatory meetings. The web platform, the newsletter and the newspaper look very similar and the symbols of the five different steps are dis-played next to the information, making the communication easier.

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NEW DISCUSSION!

Extend timetables of librariesDiscussion open till 14 February2013

Tuttifrutti shared a link12 December

NEXT PARTICIPATORY MEETING!

Requali�cation viale Lombardia21 December 2012 21:00Urban center

Like Comment Share

Tuttifrutti shared a link11 December

NEW CITIZENS’ DELIBERATION TO VOTE!

Free wi-� in the center of MonzaVoting open till 23 February 2013

Like Comment Share

Tuttifrutti shared a linkYesterday

NEW CITIZENS’ DELIBERATION TO VOTE!

Free wi-� in the center of MonzaVoting open till 23 December 2013

Like Comment Share

Tuttifrutti shared a link3 hours ago

Like Comment Share

Tuttifrutti shared a link6 hours ago

FINAL DELIBERATION!

New site for musical school V. AppianiVideo from the mayor

Like Comment Share

12 people like this

Luciano Colombo Finally!! Very nice deliberation! I hope the administration will vote it!Yesterday Like

Marco Crippa Already reached the quorum :) Good job to the team!10 minutes ago Like

Cristiana Cereda Very happy to hear this! That school deserved a better site!2 hours ago Like

21 people like this

Tuttifrutti Monza

Project

Communication of the outcomes

One of the problems of a system like this, is that it could look like a never ending sto-ry and people could start to get tired of it.It is important for citizens to receive a re-port of all the various deliberations that have been taken. The Magazine “TuaMonza” can be used for this purpose because it is a tool of communication that is sent regularly to all citizens and that is already used with the function of presenting reports. In this case the report should present all the citizen’s deliberations and all the administration’s

final deliberations that have been taken in the last two months.At the end of the year a special number could then include a final report that pre-sents all the participatory process of the year: how many ideas have been col-lected, how many turned into projects and how many brough to a final deliberation appreciated by citizens (image page 164).Like said by the mayor, there is also the possibility to join this report to the presen-tation of the social budgeting. Statistics then can illustrate easily if the participatory process is involving more people compared to the previous year

163

and can also illustrate the reputation of the Administration.I think that if citizens really see good re-sults coming out from this participatory process, and the final reports presents well all these results, more and more peo-ple would like to take part to this participa-tory system.If instead the participation is decreasing, it is responsability of the Administration and of the Office of Partecipation to define new improvements to the system in order to keep the participatory tree alive and full of fruits.The office of Participation will then create

a more detailed report for the Administra-tion, showing in which areas there is less participation and which issues didn’t re-ceive much interest from the citizens.It is also useful for the Administration that these reports show which actions taken by the City Council have been appre-ciated and which not, in this way the Ad-ministration can understand more the wishes of the citizens and can in this way define a more coherent social budgeting.

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76% Coordinator:Anna Martinetti

62% Coordinator:Paolo Pi�er

56% Coordinator:Marco Mariani

82% Coordinator:Domenico Riga

91% Coordinator:Michele Faglia

New bus lines

72% Coordinator:Martina Sassoli

59 Final deliberations

364 DISCUSSIONS

59 DELIBERATIONS

68 PROJECTS64 DELIBERATIONS

64 DISCUSSIONS

Final report 2013A very participatory year

The �rst year of the new participatory system was a success: 4500 registred members who generated 364 ideas and forced the Administration to discuss about 64 issues in the city Council. 59 of them brought already to a �nal deliberation or commitments of the Administration.22 city councilors, 6 assessors and 438 citizens took part to the projects team that developed the �nal projects.Very impressive is also the positive evaluation that these �nal deliberations got ( citizens liked 53 of the 59 �nal deliberations, in some cases with a popularity that passed the 90%)

The results of tuttifrutti show that a new politics is possible and the aim for next year is to do even better.All together we can!

Urban planning

Transportation

The Municpality changed the lines of the buses, redesigning the routes after a study of the frequences and creating more rides.

More details on the web platform tuttifrutti

Project for the requali�cation of viale LombardiaThe Municpality opened a competition for the requali�cation of viale Lombardia. Citizens voted online and approved the project “Bisofera”, that includes the creation of a Park and a biosphere. The new park will be open next April.More details on the web platform tuttifrutti

Permission to widen atticsWith this deliberations, citizens can renovate and make habitable the attics in their houses, if these supply some safety and aesthetic features.

More details on the web platform tuttifrutti

Market banned from central squareThe market of Monza have been moved from central square to Piazza Cambiaghi. Some special permissions are given (for example during Christmas time). The pitchmen appealed to the Supreme Court.More details on the web platform tuttifrutti

Urban orto in the old slaughterhouseThe Municipality approved the project “NutrireMonza” that allows citizens to rent a space inside the old slaughterhouse in via Buonarroti. Citizens can farm their vegetables and eat organic products. The orto will open next spring.More details on the web platform tuttifrutti

New underground parking under Boschetti realiThe Municpality signed an agreement with the private society Pincopal that in April 2014 will start the works for the new parking that should �nish in 2017. The society will pay all the costs and will have the concession of the parking till 2047 with �x fare of 2€/hour. More details on the web platform tuttifrutti

12 13Dicember 2013 Dicember 2013

Project

4.5 Consultation Let’ s start defining a bit better how the web platform works and how it is possible to gather ideas.The phase of consultation takes inspira-tion from the success that “I cantieri delle idee” had in Monza during tha electoral campaign (page121).The web platform has an index with: • Homepage• News• Participatory tree• Map• Gathered fruits• Record• Community

In the phase of consultation, the most im-portant of these features are the participa-tory tree and eventually the map.The participatory tree is the core of the whole platform and it is the representation of the participatory process of the citizens.Here they can keep all the process under control and the news page can help them to find the latest news from the tree.

Like I said in the beginning of this chapter, one of the key-aspects of my new partici-patory system is “less division in districts”.I rather prefer to divide the discussions according to the categories of issue more than according to the geographical loca-tion.Starting from the categories used in “Can-tieri delle idee” and, according to the dif-ferent assignments of the assessors in Monza, I defined 12 main categories:

• Urban planning• Road system - Transportation• Welfare - Education• Environment• Social politics• Youth politics• Public budget• Culture• Park and Royal Villa• Sport• Security• World of work

Participatory tree

165

www.tuttifruttimonza.it/participatory_tree

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youth politics

sport welfareeducation

road systemtranportation

security

world of work

culture

environment

socialpolitics

urban planning

public budget

82 open discussions

21 projects in progress

7 votings

Projects in progress

Open discussions

Deliberations to vote

www.tuttifruttimonza.it/participatory_tree/park_and_royal_villa/w

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What to do with the old racetrackinside the Park?

discussion open till 10 February 2013

Park and Royal villaOPEN DISCUSSION

82 open discussions


7 votings

Start new discussion


Open discussions


166


Project

As you can see from the illustrations, each of the 12 categories is one of the branch-es of the participatory tree.Pointing the mouse on one of them, it is possible to see how many leaves, flowers and fruits there are. People will start to get used to these sym-bols but anyway a small legend on the left will help them understanding the meaning:

If then users are clicking on one of the branches, this will zoom making all the categories more evident The platform is very intuitive and again, pointing the mouse of the different sym-bols, more informations will appear inside one window.

The open discussions have 2 months of time to collect at least 150 people signing the discussion, if this doesn’t happen the leaf will drop from the tree and will stay visible on the ground next to the tree.It is important to see visually if the discus-sions are making citizens active or not.The more citizens sign a discussion, the more the size of the leaf grows.

The number of 150 people it is defined in the beginning and can be increased or de-creased according on the amount of dis-cussions that turn into projects.A similar approach was taken by the platform “We the People” (page 89) that brought the threshold from 5.000 signs to 25.000 signes after realizing that the number of petitions were too high to be all taken into consideration.Anyway I think that this number shouldn’t go under 150 people, considering how easy is for the creator of the discussion to share the discussion with social networks and involve other citizens.


Open discussions



discussion open till 10 February 2013

Park and Royal villaOPEN DISCUSSION

20 people 130 people

167

Citizens will have anyway the possibility to find which are the discussions or the pro-jects that are dealing with a specific area of the city. For this reason there is a map in which all the participatory processes are displayed.Like on the participatory tree, pointing the mouse on the icons, the information about the issue will appear.

The three main colorful buttons will al-ways stay on the left side of the page and in this way citizens can select easily the open discussions, the projects in progress or the deliberations to vote.

On the top bar, there is then the possibility to filter the research, according to some parameters. In the case of the open dis-cussions these parameters are: category, newelty, expiring date, popularity.

Once one of the discussions is selected, a new window will open.Here it is possible to read all the ideas of the citizens related to that issue.

Registered members can comment the ideas or generate a new one.

The 150 users that are required to start the definition of a project will be counted including the registered member that com-mented or suggested ideas and people who clearly supported the discussion, by pressing one specific button.

Citizens can not only write new ideas or comment the existing ones but they can also give an opinion of appreciation by voting the ideas with a simple tool.

www.tuttifruttimonza.it/map



82 open discussions


7 votings



Open discussions


Map

Filter category

Free Wi-Fi in the center of Monzavote till 23 January 2013

youth politicsVOTE CITIZENS’ PROPOSITION

Expiring date: 15 February 2013

Open discussions

www.tuttifruttimonza.it/open_discussions

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NewestMost popular

TranportationsMetro and/or monorail in Monza?

Youth politicsExtend the time table of libraries

Urban planningCan we move the market from central square?

TranportationsBike sharing in Monza

Park and Royal palaceWhat to do with the old racetrack insidethe Park?

Youth politicsFree wi-� in the center of Monza






Over the expiry Category


7 votings



Open discussions


All the projects of requali�cation of this area failed. We should open our eyes: it is a huge eco-monster inside f h b k f h ld W h ld i l h k d l d d i

Let’s bring back speed car races in the track

Monza is famous in the world not for the park but for the F1-track inside the park: we should keep this in mind before taking any decision. The old speed track is unique in the world and I think it is a shame it is kept in these conditions: it should be imediatly renovated like it was in the 70’s and car races should be brought back. It could be used for Endurance and other kinds of speed competitions.

6 comments

Museum of F1

Monza and Italy have a great tradition and culture in the automotive world. It is incredible that we don’t take advantage of a place like the old track that could become a perfect location for a musuem of f1.Under the bankings there is enough space to create a modern museum and this would make this area also more accessible for citizens and tourists. How can we ask for more tourism if we don’t give value to what we have? A musuem of f1 would involve many tourists that could come from Milano. Park and Automotive can coexist very well and we should give value to both

4 comments

What to do with the old racetrack inside the Park of Monza?

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Newest Most popular

46 102

Let’s demolish it

46 102

46 102

82 open discussions


7 votings

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All the projects of requali�cation of this area failed. We should open our eyes: it is a huge eco-monster inside f h b k f h ld W h ld i l h k d l d d i

Let’s bring back speed car races in the track

Monza is famous in the world not for the park but for the F1-track inside the park: we should keep this in mind before taking any decision. The old speed track is unique in the world and I think it is a shame it is kept in these conditions: it should be imediatly renovated like it was in the 70’s and car races should be brought back. It could be used for Endurance and other kinds of speed competitions.

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Museum of F1

Monza and Italy have a great tradition and culture in the automotive world. It is incredible that we don’t take advantage of a place like the old track that could become a perfect location for a musuem of f1.Under the bankings there is enough space to create a modern museum and this would make this area also more accessible for citizens and tourists. How can we ask for more tourism if we don’t give value to what we have? A musuem of f1 would involve many tourists that could come from Milano. Park and Automotive can coexist very well and we should give value to both

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What to do with the old racetrack inside the Park ?


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If citizens instead want to suggest and open a new discussion that still doesn’t exist, they can start new one.

As you can see in illustration, it is neces-sary to be registered to start a new discus-sion. On the specific page, users must en-ter the title of the discussion, choose the category among the 12 main ones, and write an idea about the issue.If the discussion is linked to a specif place, it is also possibile to show the geographi-cal location of the issue.

Once the discussion reached at least 150 followers, the office of participation will or-ganize a public meeting.

What to do with the old racetrack inside the Park?

18 February 2013 21:00

Park and Royal villaWh d i h h ld k i id h P k?

NEXT PUBLIC MEETINGS

Urban center

The members who signed that discussion will receive a personal email advertising the public meeting, while in general the event will be advertised on the web plat-form, on the newsletter but also with of-fline tools such as the local newspaper.The date will be chosen by the Office of participation. It is preferable to keep the


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schedule of these meetings in the eve-nings, in order to involve the biggest num-ber of people.I defined 6 sites that can host these public meetings and you can see them in illustra-tion above. 5 of them are the sites of the old neighborhood committees, while one is the urban center of the City.Facilitators have a crucial role in this fase: they have to define:

• The date and the location of the public meeting (the site will be chosen according to the geographical location of the issue to discuss about. In case it is a general issue

the Urban Center is preferible.

• The lenght of the participatory process: on easy issues one or few meetings could be enough but on more complex issues, a longer participatory process is necessary.

• The City Councillor who will be the Coor-dinator of the whole process.

• The Participatory tools to use during the meeting according some variables and af-ter the consultation of a database.

• The definition of a team of citizens that will continue working and discussing on the issue, and the nomination of the Citi-zens’ coordinator.

Regarding the phase of consultation, there are basically two moments in which citizens are consulted before deliberating: one of them is online and the other offline.

• The online moment, is the collection of ideas that I have already presented, with the growth of the participatory tree.

• The second moment of consultation is

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offline and it happens during the open public meetings and the definition of pro-ject teams.Let’ s see now in more detail how the of-fline consultation works and how it is inte-grated with the online platform.

In chapter one I presented all the different tools that can be used during the phase of consultation (page 48), considering the three couples of variables I defined.One interesting outcome that should be taken into consideration, is that during this phase, offline consultations are more effective than digital ones and for this rea-son they are preferable.The new participatory platform starts col-lecting ideas and discussions with an online consultation. We can say that the starting point is more quantitative than qualitative. This is the reason why the next step of consultation should be offline and more qualitative, involving citizens that can really bring more consistent support for the development of that specific issue.The participatory meetings will be orga-nized by the Office of participation and will be guided by facilitators.The complexity of the issue is crucial to

determine the schedule of the meetings. Easy issues in fact could bring directly to a deliberation, but in general it is preferable to create a specific team that will continue the discussion. The office of participation defines the agenda of the public meetings, setting which are the issues to discuss about: if they are simple, it is possible to group more than one in the same meeting while, if the issue is complex, it will be the only one to discuss about.The distinction between the phase of con-sultation and the phase of deliberation is not so well defined and in fact, the partici-patory meetings could be considered the starting point of the deliberation process as well.The public meetings will be mostly held during evenings or weekends and will have a lenght of aproximately three hours. In the beginning the coordinator of the meeting will present the issue and will il-lustrate the ideas and the different posi-tions that have already been gathered during the online consultation.The lenght of the whole participatory pro-cess must be defined immediately and the facilitator will illustrate the schedule of the whole project. Anyway, there are many variables that must be considered for the definition of

Participatory meetings

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CITIZENS’ PRIORITIES PROJECTS IN PROGRESS


15 October 2012 21:00 Requali�cation viale Lombardia

18 February 2013

urban planning

Team project

15 October 2012 21:00 Integration of foreigners

20 February 2013

integration

Team project

15 October 2012 21:00 The renewal of the concession for the golf club

23 February 2013

sport

Team project

15 October 2012 21:00 Social housing

28 February 2013

welfare

Public meeting

15 October 2012 21:00 Let’s map the architectural barriers

2 May 2013

welfare

Team project

15 October 2012 21:00 New site for musical school Appiani education

Team project

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15 October 2012 21:00


News CalendarParticipatory techniques

Metro and/or monorail in Monza?

15 February 2013

transportation

527 CitizensOrganize meetings

15 October 2012 21:00 Free wi-� in the center of Monza

12 February 2013

youth politics


15 October 2012 21:00 Bike sharing in Monza

11 February 2013

transportation

272CitizensOrganize meetings

15 October 2012 21:00 Extend the timetables of libraries

8 February 2013

youth politica


15 October 2012 21:00 What to do with the old high speedbankings inside the Park of Monza?

24 December 2012

Park and royal villa

143 Citizens

15 October 2012 21:00 Can we move the market from cen-tral square?

urban planning

Urban orto in old slaughterhouse transportation

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6 January 2013113 Citizens 5 May 2013

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the most suitable participatory technique. For this reason I think a database for the office of participation is very important in order to make the choice of the technique easier.

The database is used by the office of par-ticipation and it is in connection with the web platform. On the home page, facilitators can keep under control the priorities of the citizens and when these reach the threshold of in-terested members, the office of participa-

tion can organize public meetings and de-fine the schedule of the entire participa-tory processes.At the same time the database gives facili-tators the possibility to check all the pro-jects in progress and check the calendar of every participatory process.

Like I said earlier, the main function of this database is the selection of the participa-tory technique. In the first chapter I pre-sented some of them and I underlined the need to consider some variables before defining the whole process.In this database all the participatory tech-

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Database for facilitators


News CalendarParticipatory techniques Login

Board game meetingFilter by:

I. DEFINITION Objectives Complexity Participants Time €totalevent

Cotroversy

De�ne calendar

The board game meeting is a creative process for facilitating collaborative dialogue and the �ltering of ideas to create and de�ne the brie�ng for the project to discuss during the phase of deliberation. In this process, participants discuss an issue in small groups (5 people) using a game board. At this stage, each group will frame the the ideas collected online arriving to the de�nition of the brief for the project by �lling a �nal report card.

Con�rm methodPrint PDF

II. WHEN TO USE IT

The board game meeting is a good technique for design and plan a project at local community level. In general the board meeting will:_ implement and frame the online consultation _ consider all the practical ideas and viewpoints collected online_ encourage input and collaboration from a wide range of participants_ create a friendly and informal consultation, accessible to everyone_ de�ne a brie�ng for the development of the project._ de�ne a team that will bring the outcomes further.

III. PROCEDURE

Pre-meeting: The pre-meeting phase focuses on developing and working with the o�ce of participation in order to de�ne the primary focus of the meeting and handle the logistics for the next two phases. The o�ce of participation will de�ne a facilitator that will be the responsable for the issue and for the whole participatory process and that will gather information and set of issues to be adressed during the public meeting.

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Participatory techniquesFilter by:

Target

Time event

1 meeting

50-100

2/3

Complexity issue

Number of participants

Controversy

Total time

3/3

Technique Objectives Complexity Participants Time €totalevent

Cotroversy

1/3

Cost

Charette Generete consensus among diverse groupsof people and form an action plan

1 2-32-3months

1-5days

1-3 Average citizensor stakeholders

City Jury A decision that is representative of average citizens who have been well informed on the issue

1-3 34-5months

3days

3 12-24 average selected citizens

Consensusconfernece

Consensus and decision on a controversialtopic

3 37-10months

3week-ends

3 10-30 average selected citizens

Focus group Expose di�erent groups’ opinions on a issue and why these are held (reasoning)

1-2 11month

2-8hours

1-3 Citizens

Planning cells Citizens learn about and choose betweenmultiple options regarding an urgent andimportant issue. Develope action plan

2 35months

5days

1 25 average selected citizens

Board game meeting

Generating and sharing ideas in an informal way. De�nition of a project team and action plan.

1-2 11-2months

2-4hours

1-3 Anyone

Scenarios Planning and preparedness for uncertain future. Vision building

3 2-36months

2-5days

1-3 Anyone



Democracy cafè

Generating and sharing ideas in an informal way. De�nition of a project team and action plan.

1-2 11-2months

4-6hours

1-3 Anyone

niques are explained in detail and they can be filtered by these variables:

• Target (young people, mixed, elderly..)• Time of the event (meaning the first pub-lic meeting/s)• Total time (meaning the time of the whole participatory process)• Complexity of the issue (from 1 to 3)• Controversy of the issue (from 1 to 3)• Number of participants (from one dozen till thousands)• Costs (from 1 to 3)

As you can see in the illustration on page

174, the participatory techniques that re-spond to the selected characteristics are highlighted.Each technique has then a description that includes these main key points:

• Definition• When to use it• Procedure • Overview • Realisation• Resource Considerations • Additional best practises and pitfalls

This structure is taken from the manual “Participatory Method Toolkit” written by Nikki Slocum and I consider this manual a very important resource because presents the participatory techniques in a very ac-curate way.The facilitators and the employees of the office of participation choose the tech-nique that they believe to be the most suit-able for the issue to discuss about, taking into considerations the selected variables.There will be also a printed catalogue with a board for each of the techniques.The next step is defining the lenght of the whole process. Usually participatory meetings bring enthusiasm but spread-ing the process out over too long period

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BOARD GAME MEETINGControversy: 1-3 Complexity: 1-2 Participants: Anyone Time event: 3-4 hours Total time: 1-2 months

I. DEFINITION

The board game meeting is a creative process for facilitating collaborative dialogue and the �ltering of ideas in order to create and de�ne the brie�ng for the project that will be implemented later on.In this process, participants discuss an issue in small groups (5 people) using a game board. At this stage, each group will frame the the ideas collected online arriving to the de�nition of the brief for the project by �lling a �nal report card.

II. WHEN TO USE IT

The board game meeting is a good technique for design and plan a project at local community level. In general the board meeting will:

• Implement and frame the online consultation • Consider all the practical ideas and viewpoints collected online• Encourage input and collaboration from a wide range of participants• Create a friendly and informal consultation, accessible to everyone• Define a briefing for the development of the project.• Define a team that will bring the outcomes further.

III. PROCEDURE

A. OVERVIEW

Pre-workshop: The pre-workshop phase focuses on developing and working with the o�ce of participation in order to de�ne the primary focus of the meeting and handle the logistics for the next two phases. The o�ce of participation will de�ne a facilitator that will be the responsable for the issue and for the whole participatory process and that will gather information and set of issues to be adressed during the public meeting.

Workshop: The board game workshop is a design workshop involving participants in understanding all the di�er-ent positions and interests, prioritising issues, developing recommendations, identifying speci�c projects and generating implementation strategies.

The post-workshop: The post-workshop phase comprises the preparation of a �nal document that gathers all the outcomes of the workshop such as recommendations, projects, action steps... The outcomes will be posted online and a project team will be formed by the facilitator to begin the implementation of the outcomes.

B. REALISATION

1. PERSONNEL AND TASK

(a) The project coordinatorThe project coordinator is one of the facilitators of the o�ce of participation. The responsibilities of the project

In the next pages I present one of the par-ticipatory techniques that can be used at this stage.In particular I present a technique that I designed and that I think can be used for many issues. I called it “board game meeting” and it is based on the consensus building approach.



CalendarFilter by:Save draft

JANUARY 2013

BOARD GAME MEETING Events to insert: 1 BOARD GAME MEETING 2-8 WEEKLY DELIBERATIVE MEETINGS

1 2 3 4 5

8 9 10 11 126 7

15 16 17 18 1913 14

22 23 24 25 2620 21

29 3027 28 31

MondaySunday Tuesday ThursdayWednesday Friday Saturday

Anna Rossi

Marco Beretta

Giulia Zappa

Andrea Sironi

Angelo Mapelli

Drag and drop facilitatorinside the calendar


of time will lose the interest in the process that’s why the whole process shouldn’t usually be longer than 2 months.On the database it is possible to define the calendar of the participatory processes. Each facilitator is marked with a different color and this makes easier the division of the jobs.Once the schedule of the process is de-fined, it will be published online on the web platform and communicated also with other channels (public screens, newspa-per, website, newsletter...).

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Designing a participatory technique Board game meeting

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The offline consultation is halfway be-tween the online consultation and the phase of deliberation.

The board game meeting is a creative pro-cess for facilitating collaborative dialogue and the filtering of ideas in order to create and define the brief for the project that will be implemented later on during the phase of deliberation.After my analysis of the participatory tech-niques, I arrived to the conclusion that the offline consultation should have in general these characteristics:• Be informal and friendly whenever pos-sible.• Be open to everyone interested.• Provide a wider vision of the issue.• Make people consider all the interests in-volved and not focusing on their own posi-tions.

In particular the board game meeting is a technique that will:• Implement and frame the online consul-tation.

• Consider all the practical ideas and view-points collected online.• Encourage input and collaboration from a wide range of participants.• Create a friendly and informal consulta-tion, accessible to everyone.• Define a briefing for the development of the project.• Define a team that will bring the out-comes further.

foto

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This public meeting can be considered a workshop during which participants are using a consensus building approach and a proactive listening. The atmospere is very friendly and informal and the aim is to give participants a tool to understand and implement the different points of view.The outcomes of the workshop will be then the starting points for the phase of deliberation.The main structure of the board game meeting is composed by three moments:

• Pre-workshop: The pre-workshop phase focuses on developing and working with

the office of participation in order to define the primary focus of the meeting and han-dle the logistics for the next two phases. The office of participation selects a facili-tator that becomes the responsable for the meeting and for the whole participa-tory process. He collects information and a set of issues to be addressed during the public meeting.

• Workshop: The board game workshop is a design workshop involving participants in understanding all the different positions and interests, prioritising issues, develop-ing recommendations, identifying specific

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projects and generating implementation strategies.

• Post-workshop: The post-workshop phase comprises the preparation of a final document that gathers all the outcomes of the workshop such as recommendations, projects, action steps... The outcomes will be posted online and the facilitator will de-fine the project team in order to begin the implementation of the outcomes.

PREWORKSHOP• Issue/Problem identification• Identify and invite participants Considering that the workshop is halfway between the online consultation and the smaller team deliberation, the workshop should be open to all the interested peo-ple. An email is sent to all the members that signed the issue. Expecially on diffi-cult issues, it is reasonable that the pro-ject coordinator and the office of participa-tion define a list of people that could be invited. Anyway the workshop is open to everyone and should be promoted online and offline.• Assemble support informationAn effective workshop begins with good information. It is important that before the workshop begins, the project coordinator

selects and gathers a solid base of techni-cal information. It is then important to un-derstand which are the key players in the issue.It is important to prepare a presentation with documents that could include:_ Regulations_ Photos_ Maps_ Previous planning documents_ Studies or reports_ Statistical information_ Surveys_ Historical evolution

The presentation and the material pro-vided to the participants should have a strong visual component. There should be pictures and drawings that help illustrating the issues and ideas.Some weeks prior to the workshop, the office of participation should hold some meetings to prepare the participatory pro-cess. The following need to be arranged:_ Establish dates_ Establish the location for the workshop_ Prepare the schedule for the workshop_ Promote and communicate the events and invite people_ Prepare the material for the meeting.

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Designers and facilitators should decide the material to prepare for the workshop. Designers should prepare the cards for the board game, reporting all the ideas and comments gathered online (green deck), preparing some character’s cards related to the issue (there is a data base with many already made cards, and oth-ers can be added).They will then decide if other materials are necessary (maps, photos, pens ....).

WORKSHOPThe workshop will be presented more in detail in chapter 5 because It is part of my prototype.The main steps of the workshop are:• Introduction to the process• Presentation of the issueParticipants watch a short presentation about the issue of the participatory pro-cess. It can be very short and in general shouldn’t be longer than 20-30 minutes. The presentation gives the participants an overview of the issue.It is important to have visual material if possible (photos, video, interview).• Presentation of the workshopThe coordinator will then invite partici-pants to start the workshop. It is important

to underline that they have to read care-fully the instructions they will find on the table and that they should limit the need of facilitators.Before starting the workshop the coordi-nator will read the 7 rules to be a good listener.• Work in groups It is the main part of the workshop and it is based on a board game that helps par-ticipants to analyse the ideas collected with the online consultation. At the end every group, using a consensus building approach should arrive to a final recom-mendation and write it in the report paper.• Sharing recommendations• Definition of a team that will continue the process (phase of deliberation).

POST WORKSHOPThe project coordinator writes a report of the evening, reporting the final delibera-tions of each group. These will be posted online, together with the list of the citizens that will take part to the phase of delibera-tion and that will continue the participatory process.


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to study circles (8-12) and citizens’ juries (12-24). The facilitator should try to involvecitizens with different opinions in order to have a representative team.The role of the facilitator is crucial for the definition of the team, which components are chosen among the citizens who par-ticipated to the public meeting. If the number of interested people is too high, the facilitator should make a selec-tion with the aim of creating a variagated team. If instead the number of people is too low, he could send emails directly to the people that signed the issue online.

The final citizens’ deliberation will be then taken by a group that includes:• A group of selected citizens • One city councillor• One facilitator• External professionalisms (if necessary)

The lenght of these projects are variable and they can go from a minimum of one week to a maximum of 2 months. On particularly complex issues the pro-

4.6 Deliberation

The phase of deliberation starts when du-ring public meetings the project coordina-tor defines a project team.The number of participants should be be-tween 8 and 24 according to the issue and according to the number of citizens that want to be involved.These numbers are coherent with the number of people that normally take part

Definition of project teams

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EXTERNAL PROFESSIONALISMS

CITY COUNCILLOR

SELECTEDCITIZENS

FACILITATOR

cess could be even longer but generally shouldn’t take more than 2 months.Once the project team is defined, it will nominate the citizens’ coordinator that will become the citizens’ representative and that, together with the City Council’s co-ordinator will be the responsable of the project.Every project in fact has two coordinators: one citizen and one city councillor. It is mandatory to have a city councillor during the phase of deliberation: he/she will be the link between citizens and the City Council.The City Councillor is chosen by the pro-ject coordinator before the public meeting and will be chosen according to the avail-ability and the expertise.The facilitator uses a “consensus building approach” (page 70) during the process, asking participants a proactive listening, considering all the points of view before arriving to any deliberation. The role of the facilitator and the office of participa-tion is important at this stage: they define which important external actors could be involved in the process bringing useful in-formation and interesting positions.The whole process is visible on the web platform as well; in this way all citizens can follow the evolution of the project team.

When the project team is defined, a flower will appear on the participatory tree. Passing with the mouse over the flower icons, it is possible to know which are the issues citizens’ teams are discussing about. There is also additional information such as the date of the end of the project and the number of the team members in-volved.

Citizens can have a list of all the projects in progress by clicking on the button on the left of the page.

The user interface is very similar to the


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End of project: 10 April 2013 17 members

Park and Royal villaPROJECT IN PROGRESS82 open discussions


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End of project: 15 April 2013


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Next meeting: 17 March 2013Urban center - Room C2621-00 pm

Details about concession of the area

The area of the high speed track with the bankings has been given in concession in 2006 from the City of Monza to SIAS for 19 years. This means that till 2025 the City of Monza can’t approve any project for the in-terested area unless �nding an agreement with the society that owns the concession. In 1994 a common agreement was signed with a project for the demolition of the entire high speed track. SIAS didn’t provide to demolition and in 2007 the former administration signed a new agreement: this one provided for the renova-tion and for making safe the track. This renovation should have been completed in december 2012 but never started. For this reason SIAS will pay the Municipality of Monza 1000€ for every day of delay.There is the possibility to �nd a new agreement, considering the last one hasn’t been observed but I want citiziens to consider that the Municipality can not approve any project without any arrangement with SIAS.

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Report meeting 10 March 2013



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Team members: 17 End of project: 10 April 2013

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one used for the phase of consultation. The main difference is the color: projects in progress are defined with orange color, the same of the flowers on the tree.

Also in this case, the projects can be fil-tered according to the category, the new-elty, the last updatings and the date of the end of the project.

Once one of the projects in progress is selected, a new window will open (illustra-tion page 183).Here, there is a top bar that reports the date of the end of the project, the number of the team members and also the names of the two coordinators: one citizens and one city councillor.

The faces of the two coordinators are vi-sible and the choice of putting them one next to each other, underlines the main idea of the new participatory system: to reduce the distance between citizens and administrators. It is also important that the city councillor



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can be from any party, from the majority orfrom the opposition, giving a sense of neutrality that should be always present in a participatory system. The function of the city councillor infact is the one of bringing the team more ac-curate information about the issue to dis-cuss. As you can see in the illustration, every project team has a dedicated page, in which only the team members can write the reports and the latest news of the pro-ject. Citizens can anyway comment the reports and continue the participatory pro-cess for the definition of a common delibe-ration.The final deliberation of the project team comes within the announced term. It can eventually comes earlier if both coordina-tors are satisfied with the outcomes and the project team has already defined a unanimous position.The role of the facili-tator and the one of the designers are im-portant for the definition of the final delibe-ration. The facilitator guides the team to the definition of one or more deliberations that should answer all the different posi-tions analyzed during the process. It doesn’t mean that all the members should agree with all the deliberations, but the deliberations should present different

Last updating Team coordinators:Airoldi Anna - Martinetti Anna

Team members: 17 End of project: 20 January 2013

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possible solutions that will then be voted online by citizens and that in the end will pass to the City Council.

The user interface is always the same: this time deliberations are represented by fruits on the participatory tree.

Deliberations can be selected either di-rectly from the tree, passing with the mouse over the fruit icons,

or selecting them from the list, clicking on the specific button.

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Park and Royal villaDELIBERATION TO VOTE

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VOTE till 24 April 2013

Park and Royal villaDELIBERATION TO VOTE

7 votingsDeliberations to v ote

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Every deliberation to vote has a dedicated windows in which citizens can read the fi-nal deliberations of the team.On the top bar there are basic informa-tions such as the quorum needed to pass (150 votes) and the expiry date for the vot-ing. The interface for voting is similar to one used during the consultation phase with the main difference that in this case there is a quorum of 150 votings.

If the quorum needed is reached, the de-liberations approved by citizens will pass to the City Council that will discuss them.Anyway all the deliberations, including the ones that didn’t reach the quorum, will be reported by facilitators on the final report.

Designers have an important role during the process because they can help repre-senting visually the final deliberations, with drawings or illustrations.This helps the project teams during the discussion phase and the citizens during the online voting.

Deliberation number 1

The Administration should sign a new agreement with SIAS, planning a project for a partial demolition of the track. In particular the demolition of the two curves would bring the Park to the original con�guration with the long “cannocchiale” designed by the Architect Canonica. The south banking should be demolished completely making the area more accessible, while the north banking should be partially demolished, leaving one third of it for land art exibitions. The straight should be requali�ed with green areas, gardens, wi-� area, recreation ground for hospitalized children, book crossing, bike sharing and some monthly shows.

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Deliberation number 2


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Quorum: 150 votes Voting closes24 April 2013

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4.7 Co-governance The office of participation makes a report everytime one of the citizens’ delibera-tions passes the quorum.The report will be sent to the major and to all the assessors and city councillors. The agenda of the City Council will be modified and it will include the discussion of the citizens’ deliberation. This will be in-troduced by the City Council’s coordinator that followed the development of the par-ticipatory project.

Citizens can follow all the process on the web platfrom. The structure is very simi-lar to the one I designed for the citizens’ projects. This time there is not anymore the partici-patory tree, but there is a section of the web platform called “gathered fruits”.In this section, citizens can see what hap-pened to their deliberations (fruits) and how they influenced the final deliberation of the Administration.The interface of the web site is very simi-lar to the one used till now, so it should be-come familiar. The main difference is the

I underline another time that citizens do not have any formal power in the decision making process because the final delibe-ration will stay on the Administration’ du-ties.Anyway citizens have voice during this process and they can change the agenda of the City council with the identification of their priorities.The idea of co-governance is evident dur-ing the definition on the Citizen’s delibera-tions. Here citizens and one city councillor work together and also the web platform shows in any stage of the process the in-teraction between citizens and the admini-strators.Let’s see now what happens after citizens voted and how the citizens’ deliberations will continue in the participatory process.If I was creating a new system for direct de-mocracy, the project was already finished because till now I presented how citizens can directly start and vote one discussion. Because we are dealing with participatory democracy, the process will continue and will pass to the Administration.

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The mayor speaks during municiapl council 3 May

We should suspend the concession of the area

The area of the high speed track with the bankings has been given in concession in 2006 from the City of Monza to SIAS for 19 years. This means that till 2025 the City of Monza can’t approve any project for the in-terested area unless �nding an agreement with the society that owns the concession. In 1994 a common

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background color that this time is red, be-cause it underlines that the participatory process passed on the Administration’s side.As you can see in the illustrations on the left, all the deliberations are reported and can be filtered according to the category of the issue, the newelty and the popular-ity.

The issues that haven’t been yet discus-sed don’t have any icon, while all the oth-ers are identified by two different icons ac-cording to the stage of the process:

Clicking on the discussion in progress, citizens can read and follow the evolution of the discussions during the assemblies of the City Council (illustration on the left).The office of participation uploads videos and reports of the City Council’s assem-blies, while councillors can write directly their opinions on the specific page dedi-cated to the issue.

At this stage citizens can comment online the positions taken by administrators dur-ing the evolution of the discussion.When the City Council takes a stand on the discussed issue, it approves a final deliberation.The final deliberation can be a detailed project with specific agreements, or could be something less defined like a commit-ment taken by the Administration.

Clicking on the “Final deliberation” button, citizens can read and vote the final delibe-rations of the Administration.It is possible to compare the final delibe-ration of the Administration with the one suggested by citizens, checking all the process that brought to that final delibera-tion. On the top bar there in fact two but-tons that allow citizens to check all the participatory process.

The way of voting is always the same, with some buttons next to the text of the final deliberation.

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Final deliberation

The area of the high speed track with the bankings has been given in concession in 2006 from the City of Monza to SIAS for 19 years. This means that till 2025 the City of Monza can’t approve any project for the in-terested area unless �nding an agreement with the society that owns the concession. In 1994 a common agreement was signed with a project for the demolition of the entire high speed track. SIAS didn’t provide to demolition and in 2007 the former administration signed a new agreement: this one provided for the renova-tion and for making safe the track. This renovation should have been completed in december 2012 but never

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After a long consultation with SIAS, the Administration signed a new agreement. This was highly requested by citizens. Within the end of 2014, the concesisonaire will �nish the works for the demolition of the south curve. This new con�guration will make easier the access to the area and will bring new 45 green ectars to Park of Monza. The streight and the North curve will be instead requali�ed with the creation of spaces for contemporary art exibitions, gra�ti competitions and new recreative spaces creating an important location of events for the Expo 2015. The museum of the Autodorme will be located inside the gullwing construction like it was in the past.If SIAS doesn’t honor the commitment, there will be a �ne of 5,000,000 Euros.

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Also during this phase designers have an important role because they can help the understanding of the final deliberation making some illustrations and drawings.

Like for the Citizens’ deliberation votings, also in this case there are two weeks of time to vote the City Council’s delibera-tion.All the results are then reported online and a specific page presents the record of the final deliberations with the percentage of appreciation of the citizens.

The record can be filtered as well, ac-cording to the category of the issue, the newelty, the popularity and the year of the deliberation.In addition to this, it is possible to read just the liked or unliked deliberations.

It is in the interest of the Administration to have a good reputation and for this rea-son, in order to get a good appreciation from citizens, the Administration should:

• Show that citizens are really part of the participatory process and not having just a token role.• Take into consideration the citizen’s de-liberations and realize them if possible.• Explain and communicate well why the final deliberation is different from the one suggested by citizens.

A good Administration infact is not only the one that does just what citizens ask, but also the one that can explain well the rea-sons behind the deliberations.If the Administration is not listening citi-zens’ opinions and deliberations, this new participatory system won’t be trusted any-more and the participatory tree will die.If this happens the main responsability is the one of the Administration that hasn’ t been able to receive the suggestions of the citizens.

Another important aspect of the phase of co-governance is to deliver the feeling of closeness between citizens and politi-cians. This can be visible during the public

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58%

61%

55%

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64%

59%

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82 open discussions


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CITIZENS: 2314 members ADMINISTRATORS: 42 members

15 October 2012 21:00

www.tuttifruttimonza.it/community



Adamo Rosario

Consigliere PDL

Appiani Silvano

Consigliere Lista Città Persone

Artesani Maria

Consigliere PD

Bindi Elio

Consigliere PD

Braccio Leonardo

Consigliere PD

Bubba Carmine

Consigliere PD

Cereda Tommaso

Consigliere PD

Faglia Michele


Fuggetta Nicola

Consigliere M5S

Gerosa Alessandro

Consigliere SEL

Imperatori Andrea

Consigliere PD

Lamperti Marco

Consigliere PD

Abate Giuliana Accardo Angelo

Aceti Angelina Adorni Natale

Airoldi Anna Allievi Simona

Anfuso Paola Arosio Francesco

Arosio Marco Artusi Paola

Astore Mattia Autuori Filippo

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meetings and during the development of the team’s projects but it must even more visible on the web platform and in the communication.When I spoke with the mayor, he told me that it is important to create a community. I think this community should be visible; that’s why one part of the web platform shows all the names and the profiles of the members that are divided among citi-zens and administrators.People are used to social networks and the idea of creating a profile is something nowadays normal. In addition to this, I think that it is impossible to create an

anonimous community.

This page makes also easier to get in touch with the administrators, sending them emails.

Cereda Tommaso

Consigliere PD

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CITIZENS: 2314 members ADMINISTRATORS: 42 members

15 October 2012 21:00

www.tuttifruttimonza.it/community



Adamo Rosario

Consigliere PDL

Appiani Silvano


Artesani Maria

Consigliere PD

Bindi Elio

Consigliere PD

Braccio Leonardo

Consigliere PD

Bubba Carmine

Consigliere PD

Cereda Tommaso

Consigliere PD

Faglia Michele


Fuggetta Nicola

Consigliere M5S

Gerosa Alessandro

Consigliere SEL

Imperatori Andrea

Consigliere PD

Lamperti Marco

Consigliere PD

Abate Giuliana Accardo Angelo

Aceti Angelina Adorni Natale

Airoldi Anna Allievi Simona

Anfuso Paola Arosio Francesco

Arosio Marco Artusi Paola

Astore Mattia Autuori Filippo

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4.8 Online and offline In this chapter I presented the new par-ticipatory system and all the main steps, starting from the collection of citizens’ ide-as till the final City Council’s deliberation.

During the participatory process, online and offline phases are overlapping and many times the process passes from on-line to offline and viceversa.In the next pages I will illustrate the whole process, reporting the main steps and the connections between them.I will show the main phases and the inter-action between the three actors:

• Administrators• Citizens• Office of participation

A crucial moment of the process is when we pass from a big number of members that are discussing online, to a small one that will continue the develpoment of the discussions.The meeting point between the big group of members to the small one, is the public

meeting.During this phase there is already a de-crease of participants: in the participatory assemblies I attended I have never seen more than about a hundred people. It is very important the role of the facilitators that should involve citizens to participate and arrive to the definition of a team of 8-24 people. Anyway citizens are able to follow the whole process from the platform and they can comment in any stage. Administrators will use less the online platform: they use it just for answering citi-zens’ requests or to add useful information during the evolution of the discussions. The most important part of the City Coun-cil’s process is offline and will be reported online by the Office of participation.This office works continuously in every stage of the process and needs to take care of both online and offline phases.

Let’s see now the flow of these three ac-tors during the different steps of the par-ticipatory process.

Project

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creation web platform and smart phone app

communicationnew service/system

update newsand newsletters

generation of discussions and ideas

administrators can comment and give information in the open discussions

most popular discussions

generate projects

promotionof public meetings


check of the platformand writing of reports

de�nition and promotionof public meetings (consulting database)

one city councillor, becomes coordinator

of the project

public meeting

facilitators use participatorytools to help citizens discussing

about the issue.

de�nition of the project team including one

citizens’ coordinator

facilitators show the scheduleof the project and de�ne a team.

the city councillorwill join the team

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creation web platform and smart phone app


update newsand newsletters

generation of discussions and ideas

administrators can comment and give information in the open discussions

most popular discussions

generate projects

promotionof public meetings


check of the platformand writing of reports

de�nition and promotionof public meetings (consulting database)

one city councillor, becomes coordinator

of the project

public meeting

facilitators use participatorytools to help citizens discussing

about the issue.

de�nition of the project team including one


facilitators show the scheduleof the project and de�ne a team.


Project

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designers help to make deliberations more visual

evolution of the process posted online.

denition of nal citizen’s deliberation

citizens check and vote nal citizen’s

deliberation

project in progress

politicans can comment and add information / comments

during the project

citizen can follow and comment the

reports of the team

citizens’deliberationsposted online

citizens’ deliberation that passes quorum will be reported

to the City Council

City Council startsdiscussing citizens’

dliberations that passes quorum

City Council’s discussionsare posted online

citizens can commentCity Council’s discussions

City Council’s members can shareopinions on the web platform

City Council approvesa nal deliberation

the nal deliberationis reported on the platform

citizens can show their satisfaction

for the nal deliberation

nal report

nal report

denition of the project team including one


facilitators show the scheduleof the project and dene a team.


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designers help to make deliberations more visual

evolution of the process posted online.

denition of nal citizen’s deliberation

citizens check and vote nal citizen’s

deliberation

project in progress

politicans can comment and add information / comments

during the project

citizen can follow and comment the

reports of the team

citizens’deliberationsposted online

citizens’ deliberation that passes quorum will be reported

to the City Council

City Council startsdiscussing citizens’

dliberations that passes quorum

City Council’s discussionsare posted online

citizens can commentCity Council’s discussions

City Council’s members can shareopinions on the web platform

City Council approvesa nal deliberation

the nal deliberationis reported on the platform

citizens can show their satisfaction

for the nal deliberation

nal report

nal report

denition of the project team including one


facilitators show the scheduleof the project and dene a team.


Project

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Il Cittadino newspaper

Communication

External agency

City Council of MonzaCitizens

2.Creation of the

of Monza

1. Agreement with an external Participatory agency3. Creation of a web

platform

4. Communication of the service with

communication

5. Citizens register in tuttifrutti

6. Citizens create discussions

7. Discussions can evolve in projects

8. A facilitator organizes a public meeting selectingthe most suitable participatory technique with a database.

10. A municipal councillor will be

the municipal responsable of the

project.

External professionals

9. Citizens participateto a public meeting

17. Citizens will vote

of the City Council

Participatory

the �nal deliberation

14. The deliberations that pass the quorum will be

discussed in the City Council11. External profes-sionals can takepart to the process

12. The participatory o�ces makes uploads

online the �nal citizens’ deliberation with the help of designers for

the visual part.

13. Citizens vote andcomment online thecitizens’ deliberation

15. The City Council’s discussions will be

posted online from the participatory

o�ce.

16. The �nal delibera-tions of the City Councilare posted on the web platform.

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4.9 System map

Il Cittadino newspaper

Communication

External agency

City Council of MonzaCitizens

2.Creation of the

of Monza

1. Agreement with an external Participatory agency3. Creation of a web

platform

4. Communication of the service with

communication

5. Citizens register in tuttifrutti

6. Citizens create discussions

7. Discussions can evolve in projects

8. A facilitator organizes a public meeting selectingthe most suitable participatory technique with a database.

10. A municipal councillor will be

the municipal responsable of the

project.

External professionals

9. Citizens participateto a public meeting

17. Citizens will vote

of the City Council

Participatory

the �nal deliberation

14. The deliberations that pass the quorum will be

discussed in the City Council11. External profes-sionals can takepart to the process

12. The participatory o�ces makes uploads

online the �nal citizens’ deliberation with the help of designers for

the visual part.

13. Citizens vote andcomment online thecitizens’ deliberation

15. The City Council’s discussions will be

posted online from the participatory

o�ce.

16. The �nal delibera-tions of the City Councilare posted on the web platform.

The project

199

After presenting the new participatory system I designed for Monza, I decided to choose one particular issue and prototype the online platform and one offline partici-patory meeting.I chose a controversial issue in Monza: the old racetrack inside the Park that was abandoned in the 60’s.I prototyped the online collection of ideas and their offline implementation during a public meeting, using the board game I designed.

Chapter 5

Prototyping

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202


When I decided which subject to choose for prototyping tuttifrutti, I considered the peculiarities of Monza.From the public meetings I attended and considering the observations made by citizens during the electoral campaign, I noticed that in Monza there is a great interest for environmental issues and for the respect of the territory. This was even more evident when the Administration

tried to bring some changes to the PGT (page 133). Considering the peculiarities of Monza and the environmental values that citizens have, I chose to deal with the difficult re-lationship between the Park of Monza and the racetrack that was built in the 20’s in-side the park itself.The park can be considered the “safety valve” of citizens in Monza because is the

5.1 The choice of the subject Prototyping

203

only green area of the city with an average of 30,000 daily visitors. It is the largest enclosed park in Europe with an extension of 700 hectares. The long history of the Park (more than 200 years), determined many changes that brought to the actual configuration. The southern part is close to the city cent-er and infact looks more like a garden with paths, big fields, small artificial lakes and refreshment sites; the central area has the presence of many villas and cascinas; the eastern part is wilder with thick forests while the nothern part is left quite wild be-cause given in concession to the golf club

and the autodrome that somehow “pre-served” it as it was in origin.In Monza there is great attention to the park and till 2012 there was an Assessor dealing just with this area. At the same time Monza lives this strange relationship between the Park and the racetrack. The racetrack has a shorter history com-pared to the park, but citizens in Monza can’t imagine their city without it and for this reason they like them both and the integration between park and racetrack doesn’t create many problems. Later I will show that anyway there are

204


some groups of people that live uncom-fortably this relationship.Like I said, the Park is 700 hectares large but half of it is given in concession to pri-vates: the Golf Club and the Autodrome.When there are no races anyway it is pos-sible to enter also in the area reserved for the racetrack. It would be more correct to speak about the racetracks (plural) be-cause there are two of them and one of those hasn’t been used anymore since 1971.

The reputation of Monza is given quite ex-clusively from the Park and the autodrome and right now these two attractions creat-ed a kind of union that is difficult to sepa-rate. It is also difficult to say which of them two is the strongest attraction. The lovers of the Park claim that the autodrome is destroying the beauty of the Park while the lovers of the autodrome claim that the autodrome is giving an extra value to it. Citizens stay in the middle and they enjoy this relationship that is part of the tradition and the affairs of the city.Recently some debates started about the old racetrack that was abandoned in the 70’s but, as I will show in the next pages, the situation is quite complex and involves many actors and stakeholders.

I chose this subject to test my prototype because it represents very well this dico-tomy that Monza lives.

The prototype I will present in this chap-ter will test how Tuttifrutti can collect ideas and develop a project for the requalifica-tion of the old racetrack inside the Park.

205

Prototyping

After the first world war the motor racing started again and the first Grand Prix of Italy took place in 1921 in Brescia. The following year the Automobile Club of Milan discussed about the need for a permanent circuit in Italy. Many locations were taken into consideration and after some debates Monza was considered the perfect location: close enough to Milano and with a big free space inside the park.

The racetrack of Monza was the third one in the world after Brooklands (1907) and Indianapolis (1911). In 1922 the works started and in just three months the Auto-drome was ready. The 10-kilometers Autodrome was com-posed by a 5.5 km road course and a 4.5 km high speed oval with banked turns at both ends. The top speed reachable that at the time in the high speed ring was

5.2 History of the Autodrome

206


around 180-190 km/h.Right now the existing tracks are still in the same locations even if many changes were done during the decays.The opening of the Autodrome took place on 3 September 1922. The Nations Mo-torcycle Grand Prix took place on 8 Sep-tember and, 2 days after, the second Grand Prix of Milano took place in front of 100,000 spectators.These two racetracks have been used for the Grand Prix of Italy but also for many other motor races and the most significant were for motorcycles, which continued in Monza till 1973.In 1928, after a serious accident in which 1 driver and 27 spectators lost their lifes, the Grand Prix of Italy has been suspend-ed for two years and the track re-designed for safety reasons. Unfortunatelly another accident in 1933 in which 3 drivers died brought to the study of a new configuration of the track and the 10-kilometers track was replaced with a shorter one. With this new configuration the speeds dropped quite much (around 100 km/h). In 1939 the circuit has been completely renovated and the high speed oval has been demolished. Many struc-tures were built like new stands and res-taurants. The new track was opened in

207

Prototyping

1939 but the second World War brought a suspension of the races. During the war, the the Autodrome has been used for many other purposes including also a den for the animals of the Zoo of Milan.After the war, the stand straight was used for a parade of military vehicles and this demaged very much the track, for this reason the autodrome was restorated and races started again in 1949.In 1955 the Monza Autodrome turned to the original configuration with two con-nected tracks for a total lenght of 10-kilo-meters. The high speed ring was re-built in the same location of the previous one and

the inclination of the banked turns varied between 12% and 80%. Many other struc-tures were built in 1955 such as buildings for the management, restaurants, media-cal services, shops and an Olympic swim-ming pool. At the inauguration of the new track, the Italian President Gronchi and the cardinal Montini (later Pope Paolo VI) were present.The new configuration of the race-track with banked turns increased the race speeds and increased the danger. In 1961 the Grand Prix of Italy was held on the 10-kilometres circuit for the last time. On the second lap a tragedy caused the

208


death of driver Von Trips and 15 specta-tors. Starting from 1962, the Grand Prix of Italy took place just on the combination road course.The high speed ring, after a re-design for safety reasons, has been used just for the 1000km race till 1969. After that just the combination road course was the official track for motor races.In 1978 Monza started the first edition of the Rally that still takes place nowadays.Since the early 70’s the autodrome of Monza didn’t experienced many changes in the configuration of the track; accidents continued to happen including the tragic one in which Ronnie Peterson lost his life in 1978. For safety reasons during the last decays the track saw little changes with the introduction of new variants in order to reduce the race speed.

The autodrome of Monza is not only re-lated to cars and many other events are taking place: these events are going from gardening and gastronomy, to other sport competitions like basketball, judo, tennis table, boxing and skating. The one of 1980 was the last edition of the Grand Prix of Italy that didn’t take place in Monza but in Imola. The Autodrome of Monza had some big

209

Prototyping

changes in 1989 with the creation of new pit lane and new facilities. Other changes were done in 2001: a large building (more than 250 meters long) gave space to new facilities like a media center and rooms for the direction of races.Those transformations gave the Auto-drome a modern appearance but, com-pared to the changes done in the 50’s, these changes caused longer debates and found difficult agreements after many ne-gotiations with the City Councils of Monza and Milan (owner of Monza Park) and the Lombardy regional authorities.

1922

1935

1949

1955

1962

2012210


5.3 The high speed ring now As we can see from the illustration on the left that represents the evolution of the racetrack of Monza, we can notice clearly the two tracks.In my prototype I will consider the old high speed ring that hasn’t been used for more than 40 years and that it is still in the Park.This track has an important historical value but it isn’t even represented in the maps inside the Park of Monza.

For this reason just few people are visiting it, entering from a small hidden gate of the Autodrome. This ring is not the one built in 1922 but is the one re-built in 1955 with its pecu-liar shape and its famous banked turns. It is almost 3,5 Kilometres long and the amount of concrete covers an area of 50,000 squared meters, twice the size of St Peter’s square in Vatican.

211

Prototyping

It is almost unbelievable that inside the Park of Monza there is such a big area covered with concrete and people can’t find it.Not many people in fact are visiting this place: usually cyclists that can enjoy the experience of going on the track with thier bikes, or some turists and lovers of car racing.Almost all citizens of Monza have been there at least once in their lives and it is quite impossible to resist the temptation to reach the top of the track challenging the force of gravity.The track has never been maintained for

212


so many years that now the structure itself is extremely dangerous and from the bot-tom of the track it is possible to see the crumbled concrete. In the 90’s the Municipality of Monza and the Municipality of Milano that are the owners of the Park, signed an agreement with the Automobile club for the demolition of the whole ring in return for a lower price for the concession of the area. This demolition never happened and in 2007 a new agreement was signed be-tween the Municipalities of Monza and Milano and the Automobile Club: this time not for the demolition of the area but for the requalification of the whole track and the creation of a museum underneath the structure.The deadline of this renovation was de-cember 2012 and also this time the agree-ment hasn’t been honored. This means that the Automotive club, who has the concession on the Autodrome till 2026, will pay a fine of €1000 for every day of delay. Of course it is possible that a new agree-ment will be signed in the next months but there are no clues about the future of this historical track. Also the alternation of the political Administrations was responsa-ble for the different agreements that were signed.

213

Prototyping

5.4 Prototyping online phase

214



discuss till 10 April 2013

Park and Royal VillaOPEN DISCUSSION

Once I selected the issue of the old race track inside the Park, I wanted to gather citizens’ opinions and understand the levelof participation around a matter like this.

Like I presented in the previous chapter, once a registered member opens a new discussion on the web platform, a new green leaf will appear on the participatory tree.

In my prototype I tested this online phase with the creation of an online survey.Maybe the most suitable tool for prototyp-ing my online platform could have been a

blog but I decided not to use it because on the web I found some already existing blogs discussing about this issue.I decided to test the participation of citi-zens using facebook.I sent the survey to almost 400 citizens of Monza selected randomly in facebook. I didn’t send it to any person I know be-cause I didn’t want the results to be dis-torted.I got around 100 answers within few days (25% of the sample). It was very intere-sting for me to notice how facebook worked well at this stage and how strong the par-ticipation was. People in fact didn’t just answer my survey but some of them also sent me messages asking more informa-tion about my project. With three people I also shared my vision of the participatory politics I have in mind and I was really sur-prised by this exchange of opinions and by this strong interest for my thesis.Anyway this is something that I also no-ticed during the last electoral campaign: people appreciate new tools that allow them to share opinions. For this reason I

215

Prototyping

think facebook was a good tool that gave me the possibility to confirm my thoughts.The survey that I created wasn’t just col-lecting ideas for the race track but some of the questions helped me to make a sort of analysis of the facebook users.I found out that just the 25% of the inter-viewees were over 35 years old and the majority of them were women. These re-sults are somehow predictable but they prove that the web can help young gene-rations and women to have more voice in political matters, especially in one Country where these categories are not well repre-sented.

In my survey I created many questions because I didn’t want to misunderstand the different points of view of the inter-viewees. More than the 80% of them have walked on the track so they knew which is the area I was asking to discuss about. Just the 7% of the interviewees didn’t know about this place and this proves that the people who answered the survey were somehow interested in this issue. This was even clearer when I asked them to give a grade from 1 to 10 about the beauty of the place: the average was really high (8,3) and the 30% of the interviewees gave the highest grade.


216

The questions I wrote were very objective and I was careful not to influence any opi-nion. This is also one of the reasons why I chose to make a survey: I didn’t want peo-ple to get influenced by others’ answers.I decided to insert also images that could help interviewees to develope the phase of ideation.

More than the 50% of the answers under-lines how this issue is a big priority for the Park of Monza. In particular the results are quite unanimous and the 95% of them are against the complete demolition of the area.At the same time this issue presents many controveries: not only between people in favour or against the demolition but also among people in favour of the requalifica-tion of the track.As you can see in the graph in the next page, I tried to sumarize the different posi-tions. None of them is reaching the majo-rity but it is quite clear the wish of citizens to requalificate this area even if just a 10% think that the place should be used for car racing. Two very common words were “memory” and “past”. Citizens in fact see this place more like a symbol of the past that would lose charm if the car racing is coming back.

During my phase of prototyping I also made some interviews to Franco Gia-cotti (one of the responsables of the Au-todrome of Monza) and Bichi Montrasio (committee for the Park of Monza). Their positions were very far: the first one underlined the need of a profitable project for that area, the second one underlined the need to demolish the old and also the actual autodrome because park and car races will never integrate.These are just the extremes, in the middle there are many other positions.The aim of my prototype is to define a technique take could help people in start-ing a consensus building approach using a proactive listening. I think this is indis-pensable, expecially in controversial is-sues like this one.

In the next pages I present the prototype of the board game meeting I described in the previous chapter.

Prototyping

217

YES: It is a shame they left this resource like this

YES: It is a monster inside a beautiful Park

NO: it is not the �rst priority

NO: It is absolutely not a priority

10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

IS THIS ISSUE A PRIORITY?

They should demolish the track because it is danger-

ous and useless

They should demolish the track because is a monster of concrete

They should renovate the

track and organize car

races


track and make this

place a big touristic site but without

car races

They should promote this

place because unique in the

world

They should keep the

place partialy and integrate it more with

the park

They should keep it as

now.

Other

20%

40%

WHAT SHOULD THE MUNICIPALITY DO?

YES: It is a shame they left this resource like this

YES: It is a monster inside a beautiful Park

NO: it is not the �rst priority

NO: It is absolutely not a priority

10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

IS THIS ISSUE A PRIORITY?

They should demolish the track because it is danger-

ous and useless

They should demolish the track because is a monster of concrete


track and organize car

races


track and make this

place a big touristic site but without

car races

They should promote this

place because unique in the

world

They should keep the

place partialy and integrate it more with

the park

They should keep it as

now.

Other

20%

40%

WHAT SHOULD THE MUNICIPALITY DO?

5.5 Prototyping offline phase Designing for democracy

Once I collected the citizens’ ideas from the survey and from the online forums, I tried to prototype the offline phase.In particular I was interested in testing the gap between the online and the offline consultation.Like I have already said, the core of the system is offline, and the offline process starts with a public meeting. In the first chapter I presented some of the participatory techniques; they are many and they must be carefully chosen ac-cording to some variables. In general I think the first phase of the off-line meetings should be very friendly and informal. For this reason I searched which were the techniques that could have been suitable for the discussion of the old race track. I was searching for a cheap and quite fast process dealing with a controversial issue of medium complexity. At the same time I was searching for an informal technique.

The three techniques that I found suitable for this purpose were:

• Open space technology • Round table workshop• Democracy Cafè

One of my concerns was to find a way to link the online and the offline phases: I didn’t want them to seem completely separated so I decided to design a new participatory technique that could answer my needs in the best way.I called this participatory technique “board game meeting”.

In order to create a friendly and informal atmoshpere, I decided to design a board game that was helping participants to de-bate, taking into consideration all the posi-tions and all the ideas collected during the online phase.This technique can be used in many situa-tions but I think it is extremely good when the issue is very controversial and this is why I designed it.

Before describing the prototype of the workshop, I speak shorty about the prepa-

218

The workshop started with a short presen-tation of the issue.The information that I presented was not too much detailed because I didn’t want to limit the creative phase of implementation. It was around 20 minutes long and I used many pictures because I found important not to create misunderstandings about the issue to discuss about.I also gave them some basic information about the agreements signed by the Mu-nicipality of Monza and the concessionaire

ration of the workshop.In my simulation I was acting as the pro-ject coordinator.During the phase of the pre-workshop, I basically collected materials and infor-mation about the issue. I then planned a schedule for the workshop and I decided the contents of the presentation to show to the participants.I then prepared all the material for the workshop and when everything was ready, I invited ten people to participate.I chose ten people because the normal size of the groups for this participatory technique should be 5 people.In this way I could test two groups and ana- lyze the differences in the methodology.

The workshop was 3 hours long and I held it in the evening. In my prototype I chose personally the ten people to invite. In the real system this shouldn’t happen be-cause it is a workshop open to everyone and just few people could be invited by the project coordinator.Anyway I chose ten people that were in-terested in the issue and that have already visited the race track inside the Park.I created two variagated groups, consid-ering different genders and ages (young, adults, elderly).

Prototyping

219

of the area.After the presentation of the matter, I pre-sented the structure of the workshop. I underlined the importance of the proactive listening and I read them the 7 rules to be a good listener [Marianella Scalvi]: • Do not be in a hurry to reach conclusions.• What you see depends on the perspec-tive in which you are. To be able to see your perspective, you have to change per-spective.• If you want to understand what another person is saying, you must assume that he is right and ask him to help you to un-derstand.• Emotions are fundamental cognitive tools if you can understand their language. They don’t inform you of what you see, but how you look. • A good listener is an explorer of all pos-sible worlds. The most important signals for him are the ones that in the beginning sound annoying, marginal and irritating because inconsistent.• A good listener doesn’t have problems to deal with the paradoxes of thought and communication. He addresses the disa-greements as opportunities to practice.• To become an expert in the art of listen-ing you must take a humorous approach.

But when you have learned to listen, the humor comes from its own.

The biggest difference that I found be-tween the online tools and the offline ones, is that on the web people are not keen in listening but they strongly claim their posi-tions without taking into consideration any other option.This workshop and the way it was struc-tured, was forcing people to listen and understand the reasons behind every opi-nion. This kind of approach would be impossible using the web, and this is way I decided to keep the core of the system offline.

The participants have then been divided in two groups of five people. I tried to make them variagated, grouping together peo-ple that didn’t know each other.This picture below shows how the tables looked like.


220

On every table participants found the fol-lowing materials:

• One big board with the sketch of a tree.

• One map of the park of Monza and one map of the autodrome.

• Three decks (one green, one orange, one purple).

• One orange board.

• Two orange papers for final report.

• One envelope.• Pens and markers.• Paper with instructions.

I present now all the steps of the working session. Every group found these instructions writ-ten among the material on the table.

1 • Every member of the group introduced himself briefly. After that, the group had to elect the team leader. Both groups chose a young member as the group leader.The duty of the group leader was to read the instructions and write the final report.

2 • Every group had to start the board-game with the green deck. Starting from the group leader in a clockwise direction, every participants had to pick a card, read it to the group and display it on one of the branches sketched on the board.

Prototyping

INDICAZIONE PROGETTUALE

TITO LO

CHI?

PERC HE’ ?

COSA?

PAROLE CHIAVE

ALTRO

QUA NDO ?

Work in groups

221

During this phase, the groups can move the cards and reframe the categories as many times as they want.Once the green deck is spread all around the board, the teams will sumarize the ca-tegories defined and they can implement or add new ideas using the blank orange cards.I noticed that participants liked very much this part, and they had fun is understand-ing the reasons behind some opinions. This was a good point of the game: forcing people to understand the reasons behind each opinion. This is the main goal of the consensus building approach.

There is a clear connection between the board game and the online platform. The green cards in fact are reporting all the ideas and comments collected on the web.In my prototype, I wrote the ideas that i got from my survey and some others that I found in already existing blogs and froums.The ideas and comments are reported in the middle of the card and everyone has a number on the bottom that will be useful later on.The aim of this stage is to read all the ideas without passing judgements but fo-cusing more on the reasons behind all the positions. During my prototyping session, there were 55 green cards and both teams groupped them into 9 categories. Even though the number was the same, the criterias they used were different. One group defined very generic positions, while the other found more specific ones.

The orange deck is composed by blank cards that have the function of post-its and they can be used in any stage of the process. In this case one of the groups used the orange cards to write the catego-ries they defined. The other group instead wrote directly on the board.


9

I know that the new Admi-nistration is “ecologist” so will e verything possible in order to ma ke the issue unsolvable ... an yway I would use the space for other kind of car racing: small tracks f or motard, enduro, trial, mini bikes, r emote-controlled cars....etc etc because Monza in f amous in the world for its tracks, not f or its “ecology”!

222

Prototyping

223

3 • The next phase takes inspiration from the IDEO Method cards.This time the group should use the pur-ple deck. In my prototype I used 25 cards representing different characters, some of them somehow related to the issue of the project (f1 fans, ecologists..), while others not really related ( musicians, gardeners, land artists...).Starting from the group leader, every member chooses one character he would like to emphatize with.If participants want, they can create an-other character using one of the blank cards of the purple deck.After the selection, each member should imagine the needs of that person and ex-plain where he would locate the card in-side the board.During this phase participants should use their creativity and write new ideas or suggestions from the perspective of their characters. This is another way to force people to think in a different way.

During the prototyping, some participants were a bit stunned by this activity but in the end of the whole process, both groups took into consideration some ideas that came out from this phase for the definition of the final group’s recommendation.


224

Prototyping

4 • Each group should then select just 5 cards from the tree. They can be either green or orange. The group should identi-fy the ones that are thought to be the most interesting and relevant. At the same time not more than 2 cards can come from the same branch. This forces the group to se-lect ideas from at least 3 different catego-ries. The reason of this rule is not to close the mind of the group keeping the process of implementation still open.The teams are in this way forced to con-sider more then one interesting point of view.If the group doesn’t arrive to a common agreement around the 5 cards to select, each component of the group can pick one of them. The 5 cards will be then dis-played inside the orange board.

The approach of the two groups was quite different.One group started selecting first the cate-gories and then inside those the best cards while the other group took into considera-tion the number of ideas inside each cate-gory and chose the ones with more ideas.Both groups selected 4 green cards and one orange. Just one of the cards has been chosen by both groups.

225

5 • Once the group has selected the 5 cards, the big board can be removed and now the group works just on the orange board.Starting from these 5 cards, the group should start a discussion about the links and the compromises that can be found in order to arrive to the best final delibera-tion, trying to consider all the outcomes of the process.The participants can still implement the ideas and write or draw on the board.

I found interesting that during this phase the participants realized how diffult is to


226

Prototyping

227

take a decision and many times they re-framed the final deliberation, trying to con-sider all the positions on the table.Both groups changed opinions at least once and this is good because it proves that they didn’t petrify on one position.At this stage the two maps were very useful because they helped so much the groups to have a clear idea about the Park and the areas they were discussing about. Without the map it would have been im-possible for them to define consciously the final deliberation.

One of the two groups arrived quite easily to a final deliberation, taking into consider-ation at least 3 of the final cards and rea-soning why not to consider the other two.The second group instead needed more time to find a final agreement because the opinions were not similar. Anyway they found a compromise that took into consi-deration at least 4 of the 5 final cards.The good thing that I noticed during this final deliberation was that people were really using a proactive listening and they were trying to analyse all the reasons behind the various positions. One of the two groups in particular changed delibe-ration: they were more likely to demolish the curves of the old track with the aim of

bringing the park to its original project, but in the end they realized that there were more cons than pros and for this reason they defined a project of requalification considering more than one point of view.

6 • Once the groups defined the final de-liberations, the group leaders had to fill the final report papers.Every component of the groups had to write name and email. These informations will then be useful for the project coordina-tor when there is the need to define the team that will continue the developing of the project.

The two papers are very simple and once the groups arrive to a final deliberation, it requires few minutes to fill these papers.On the top of the first paper, there are 5 white circles. Each group should write the number of the 5 cards they selected (the green cards has a number written on the bottom). If the group chose an orange card, they should just write an asterisk.The card is the asking:

• TITLE: a short sentence that sumarize the final deliberation of the group.• WHO?: who are the users the group took into consideration?• WHAT? which is the final deliberation of the group?• WHY? Which are the reasons that are supporting the deliberation of the group? • WHEN? An estimate of the time required for the realisation of the project.• KEY WORDS: some words that help to express the main aspects of their delib-eration.• OTHER: Any other comment.

The second paper was asking to show and locate on the map the final delibera-tion. This helped the participants to make the deliberation a bit more specific.


228

INDICAZIONE PROGETTUALE

TITOLO

CHI?

PERCHE’ ?

COSA?

PAROLE CHIAVE ALTRO

QUANDO ?

At the end of the workshop, each group leader presented briefly the final delibera-tion of the group.In my prototyping I was more interested in the process than in the results of the dis-cussion. Anyway the deliberations of the two groups were these:

GROUP 1: renovation of the two curves using one of them for international graffiti contents and the other for a skaters’ area. There should be then a better communi-cation of the historical value of the area with signs and photos of the past. The straight should instead be demo-lished, integrating more these area with the Park.The project should be realized within the expo of Milano 2015, with the possibility to use this area as a call for tourists.

GROUP 2: demolition of the south curve and 3/4 of the north curve. Usage of the only left part of the curve for exibitions of land art. Requalification of the straight with green areas, gardens, wi-fi area, recrea-tion ground for hospitalized children, book crossing, bike sharing and some monthly shows.

Prototyping

229

Sharing deliberations

Once the groups finished to fill the papers, they had to put them inside the envelope. If some of the 5 cards they selected were orange and not green, they also had to in-sert these inside the envelope.The envelope was then left on the table and collected from the facilitator.


230

Prototyping

In the illustrations at page 230 I presented how the area would change according to the two groups. Like I already said, during my prototype I wasn’t considering the out-comes but my attention was on the pro-cess.It was interesting to see that the board game I designed helped participants to keep a consensus building approach.From the final deliberations I saw the in-fluence that the process had. For exam-ple, the idea of group 1 to dedicate one of the two curves for graffiti contests came out from the purple card representing one graffiti writer. The same thing happened to the other group that decided to dedi-cate one part of the new green area for the hospitalized children of the hospital of Monza that is very close to that area. Also this idea came out from the phase of im-plementation.

The maps then helped the groups to vi-sualize the area and understand better the situation. In the beginning the group num-ber 1 was defining a deliberation more similar to the one of the second group, with the demolition of the curves in order to re-create the long “corridor” that was crossing the park in the past.But then after the realized how many op-

portunities there were for the requalifica-tion of the area, they decided to change deliberation.Anyway the process of both groups worked well.

At the end participants were really enthu-siastic about the workshop and had fun. This was the aim of my workshop: creat-ing a friendly meeting, in order to arrive to a recommendation on a controversial is-sue using the proactive listening and the consensus building approach.

In chapter 4 I presented how then the process would continue, with the phase of deliberation and co-governance. The phase of deliberation will start from the analysis of the report papers written by each group, paying attention not only on the contents of the deliberations but also on the process of the groups during the workshop, considering for example which were the most selected cards during the last phase and which were the new imple-mented ideas that have been generated during the workshop.All the results will be posted online, giving the possibility to every citizen to comment the evolution of the participatory process.

231

Conclusions

233


234

1 • How to integrate citizens’ needs of participation with the existing repre-sentative system?The participatory system I created starts from the definition of the citizens’ priori-ties. In this way citizens are really setting the agenda of the City Council, forcing the administrators to deliberate on the issue citizens defined.This integration anyway shouldn’t be just virtual but should be visible and proactive, that’s why every project team should have two coordinators, one citizen and one city councillor. This is also a way get in touch with the representatives reducing the dis-tance between citizens and administrators breaking down also the stereotypes about politics.

2 • How the web and the new technolo-gies could help for increasing partici-pation and spreading a major sense of community?The facebook page of the Municipality of

Conclusions

Monza with more than 11,000 members. proves that there is a potential community of people that could be interested in par-ticipate in the decision-making processes of the city. The web platform I designed is showing the profiles of the members. I think this is something important that helps creating a major sense of community. A community is not made by nicknames but it is made by real people. The possibility to use the facebook profile to be registered to this web platform, is a way to make the pro-cess easier trying to involve more young people and women who are normally less represented in the Public Administrations.The pubic meetings and the different par-ticipatory tecnhiques are also a way to create a sense of community: the meet-ings in fact are usually informal and stimu-late participants to speak and to meet new people.

3 • How to make participation system-atic, appealing and continuous?The web platform I created is very simple

Answering the research questions

235

Answering research questions and final considerations

and accessible. The interesting aspect of the participatory tree I designed is that the plant (and the system) will die if there isn’t enough participation. This is somehow forcing the Aministrators to show the va-lidity of the system with their actions and with the gathered results.It is a systematic process because there are very clear rules: the most popular dis-cussions will generate public meetings and then project teams. The delibera-tions that reach a quorum online will be then discussed by the City Council. These rules are making the process more struc-tured: a radical change compared to the previous system in Monza.It is then appealing because the online platform has an easy and funny interface, while the offline meetings are usually us-ing an informal approach. When I proto-typed the participatory meeting, I realized how much people enjoyed the event and this gave me positive thoughts about the effectiveness of Tuttifrutti.Even though these processes are clearly structured, they are anyway flexible: the participatory techniques are many and they are customizable according to the is-sue. Using different techniques helps to have a more continuous interest.

4 • Which could be the role of the de-signer in the definition of a new partici-patory system?Designers can have a crucial role also in social aspects and in the definition of democratic tools. Designers are more accustomed than politicans to participatory techniques be-cause they use them regularly.Designers in fact are always keeping in mind the users they are designing the project for, and they usually involve them during the process.A city is just a very big product and de-signers can understand more the needs of the citizens, finding new creative solu-tions expecially in a moment in which the credibility of the Public Insitutions hit the lowest point.

5 • Which are the criterias for the selec-tion of the participatory techniques?Each participatory technique has different characteristics and I defined some varia-bles for the definition of the most suitable one. These variables are considering the target of people to interact with, the num-ber of people to involve, the lenght of the process, the complexity of the issue, the controversy of the issue and the costs.I created a database that will help the fa-


236

cilitators for the selection and each of these techniques has well detailed in-structions.

When I was a child I loved playing “Sim City”, a computer game in which I was a mayor and I had to administrate my city and I was facinated by how simple it was mapping the citizens’ requests. I found incredible that nothing similar was exisiting in the real world. After 10 years I am still facinated by that game because it is based on the simple fact that the mayor must listen to the requests of the citizens and administrate for them. Maybe a child doesn’t know the mean-ing of words like corruption, briberies, power, conflict of interests, bureaucracy, privileges.... Maybe a child is not expert enough and doesn’t know how the real world works.During my research I realized how difficult it is to work for a Public Administration, I realized that things that should be consi-dered basic, in reality are not so basic and that unfortunatelly the target should be al-ways placed lower than expected in the beginning. Changing politics is extremely difficult be-

cause you need to change politicians first. If that is too difficult, maybe we should do like suggested by Corrado Guzzanti: “if electors don’t feel represented by their po-liticans we should change these blessed electors”.In my thesis I tried to create a system that increases the value of good politics and gives the possibility to citizens to work as a community and for a community.I brought the small support that a student of design can bring to these important is-sues.I saw the appreciation of people during my prototyping and I realized how strongly citizens are asking for this new participa-tory approach and this repaid immensly my job.

This is how I see it, this is an example of the designer I want to be and the kind of vision of the world I have.I hope to grow bringing inside me the same values of that child that 10 years ago was playing computer games.

Final considerations

Conclusions

237


238

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Index pictures - diagrams

• Page 16: Cover Time, person of the year 2011

• Page 22: Error 404, Democracy not found

• Page 29: Greek Democracy at work

• Page 30: Ostrakon of Aristeides, ostracized in 482 B.C.

• Page 32: Snapshot from Liquidfeedbacks

• Page 47: Snapshots from www.mybarackobama.com

Comparison use of social networks Obama vs Romney

• Page 52: Planning for real

• Page 54: Snapshot from Yougov

• Page 59: Democracy cafè

• Page 64: Poster of the project “ex fonderie: progetto partecipativo”

Presentation of the final deliberation

Render of the final project

• Page 70: Open town meeting in the past

• Page 72: Open meetings on participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre

• Page 74: Posters for a referendum about smoking in Switzerland

Collection of signs for a referendum in Switzerland

• Page 80: Flow chart designed by Victor Papanek in his book “Design for a real world”

Pictures

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• Page 83: Snapshot from myfootballclub.co.uk

• Page 84: Snapshot from squadramia.it

• Page 89-90: Snapshots from the website “Wethepeople”

• Page 93: Snapshot from the website Meetup

• Page 94: Snapshot from the web page “le fabbriche di nichi”

• Page 96: Advertisment of “Decorourbano”

• Page 97: Snapshot from the Smartphone application “Comunichiamo”

• Page 98: Snapshot from the website “Impossibleliving”

• Page 99: Snapshot from the Smartphone application “Impossibleliving”

• Page 100-101: Snapshots from the blog darsenapioniera

• Page 102-103: Snapshots from the facebook page “Copia e incolla: idee in Comune”

• Page 108: Snapshot from the website “Kickstarter”

• Page 109: Snapshot from the website “Thepoint”

• Page 112: Coat of arms of the City of Monza

• Page 117: Images of Monza: Iron crown; Royal Villa; Cathedral; F1 track

• Page 118: Images from the last electoral campaign (M5S, CambiaMonza)

• Page 120: Electoral poster of the mayor Roberto Scanagatti during the elections 2012

• Page 121: Snapshot from the website “Cantieridelleidee”

• Page 122: Images from the meetings of “Cantieridelleidee”

• Page 124: Cover of TuaMonza (October 2012)

• Page 125: Snapshot from the website of the Municipality of Monza

• Page 126: Public monitor in the center of Monza

• Page 127: Snapshot from the facebook page of the Municipality of Monza

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Index pictures-diagrams

• Page 128: Example of public manifesto of the Municipality of Monza

• Page 130: Snaposhot from the website “Monzapartecipa”

• Page 133: Images of the protests against the PGT in Monza

• Page 134-135: Snaposhot from the website “Monzapartecipa” (project Viale Lombardia)

• Page 138: Public manifesto dealing with the need of participation in Monza

• Page 142: Simulation of the website “Tuttifrutti”

• Page 160: Photomontage presenting the promotion of “Tuttifrutti” with a public manifesto

Simulation of the letter for the the promotion of “Tuttifrutti”

• Page 161: Simulation of the website “Tuttifrutti” (news page)

• Page 162: Simulation of the facebook page “Tuttifrutti”

• Page 163: Simulation of the newspaper “Il Cittadino”, presenting “Tuttifrutti”

• Page 164: Simulation of the final report of “Tuttifrutti” on the magazine “TuaMonza”

• Page 166: Simulation of the website “Tuttifrutti” (participatory tree)

• Page 168: Simulation of the website “Tuttifrutti” (map)

• Page 169: Simulation of the website “Tuttifrutti” (open discussion)

• Page 170: Simulation of the website “Tuttifrutti” (new discussion)

• Page 173: Simulation of the database “Tuttifrutti” (news)

• Page 174: Simulation of the database “Tuttifrutti” (participatory techniques selection)

• Page 175: Simulation of the board explaining the “board game meeting” instructions

• Page 176: Simulation of the database “Tuttifrutti” (calendar)

• Page 177: Material used during the prototype of the “board game meeting”

• Page 178: Part of the prototype of the “board game meeting”


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• Page 183: Simulation of the website “Tuttifrutti” (projects in progess)

• Page 185-186: Simulation of the website “Tuttifrutti” (deliberations to vote)

• Page 188: Simulation of the website “Tuttifrutti” (gathered fruits and discussions)

• Page 190: Simulation of the website “Tuttifrutti” (final deliberations)

• Page 192: Simulation of the website “Tuttifrutti” (community)

• Page 200: Car racing on the high speed track of Monza during the 60’s

• Page 203: Park of Monza and Autodrome area from the satellite

• Page 204: Collage of images of the high speed track of Monza (in the 60’s and now)

• Page 206: Original project of the Autodrome (1922)

• Page 207: Cars on the high speed track during the 1923 Grand Prix of Italy

Demolition of the old banked curves (1938)

Poster of the first Grand Prix of Italy disputed in Monza (1922)

• Page 208: High speed track rebuilt in 1955

• Page 209: 1936 Grand Prix of Italy

Accident of Wolfgang von Trips during the 1961 Grand Prix of Italy

Accident of Ronnie Peterson during 1978 Grand Prix of Italy

2004 Grand Prix of Italy

• Page 211: The high speed track nowadays

• Page 212: The high speed track nowadays (underneath)

People sitting at the top of the bankings

• Page 213: Drawing of the section of the bankings

“Il Cittadino” newspaper speaking about the track (2 October 2012)

The high speed track nowadays (people cycling)


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• Page 215: Snapshot of the online survey for collecting ideas about the high speed track

• Page 219: Presentation during the workshop

• Page 220: Material used during the workshop

• Page 222: Example of a green card used during the workshop

• Page 223-229: Images from the workshop

• Page 228: Papers for the final report of the workshop

• Page 31: Diagram showing the functioning of the delegative system in liquidfeedbacks

• Page 35: Diagram of the Sherry Arnstein’s ladder of participation

• Page 36: Diagram of the wheel of participation of Lanarkshire

• Page 36: Diagram showing the matryoska of participation

• Page 43,45: Diagrams showing the tools of communication and their variables

• Page 48-50: Diagrams showing the techniques of consultation and their variables

• Page 55-57: Diagrams showing the techniques of deliberation and their variables

• Page 60: Simple Action Research Model

• Page 63: Phases of the participatory project for the requalification of a former foundry

in Modena

• Page 65-67: Diagrams showing the techniques of co-governance and their variables

• Page 127: Datas about communication in Monza

• Page 137: Diagram presenting the Municipal system in Monza (till 2012)

• Page 140: S.W.O.T. analysis of a new participatory system in Monza

• Page 151: Diagram presenting the new Municipal system in Monza (Tuttifrutti)

• Page 157: Diagram presenting the actors involved in the new office of participation

Diagrams


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• Page 171: Map presenting the location of the 6 sites for the participatory meetings

• Page 181: Diagram presenting the actors involved in the project teams

• Page 194-197: Diagram presenting the blueprint of the new participatory system

• Page 198-199: Diagram presenting the System Map of the new participatory system

• Page 210: Diagram presenting the evolution of the Autodrome of Monza

• Page 217: Datas from the online survey for collecting ideas about the high speed track

• Page 221: Material used during the workshop

• Page 230: Maps of the Autodrome, showing the final deliberations of the two groups

during the workshop


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La libertà non è star sopra un alberonon è neanche avere un’opinionela libertà non è uno spazio libero

libertà è partecipazione

Freedom is not living in an ivory towernot even having an opinionfreedom is not a free space

freedom is participation

Giorgio Gaber

designing for democracy

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