A “participatory budget” is a democratic platform tool that allows ordinary people to decide how to allocate part of a municipal budget. This “democratic deliberation” process allows citizens to identify, discuss, and prioritize certain public spending projects and gives them the agency to decide how to spend public dollars.

The city of Paris has been experimenting with their own Participatory Budgets program since 2014 and has allocated roughly 500 million Euros to projects chosen by actual Parisians since 2014. This year they are setting aside 65 million Euros for these special projects.

According to NewCities.org, the majority of the projects funded have had to do with public space; designing and in activating it. Click HERE to read more about the Parisian Participatory Budget program.

While similar to Project DTO, this process actually allows citizens to prioritize the projects they’ve chosen; whereas DTO crowdsourced the ideas but its now up to the City to decide what actually comes to fruition and when.

What projects would you want to see funded first?

Brendan O'Connor

Editor in Chief of Bungalower.com

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