History of Participatory City

Many cities around the globe are faced with systemic challenges, such as growing inequality, unemployment, poverty, homelessness, inadequate healthcare, domestic violence, and racism, where individuals are often quite isolated from each other. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated existing systemic challenges in ways that have not been experienced before1. A number of progressive governments and like-minded organizations are viewing this as an opportunity for a reset – to build forward better.

Canada is no exception. In its fall 2020 economic statement2, it committed to spend up to $100 billion over the next three years, including on investments that will serve as a down payment for “transformative initiatives”3. There is a unique opportunity at this moment in time to explore how a national Participatory Canada scaling strategy could be one of those transformative initiatives. Participatory social infrastructure empowers people to be co-producers of transitions in their communities. Federal programs such as the Canada Healthy Communities Initiative4 signal a recognition of the need to invest in participatory social infrastructure as part of the COVID-19 recovery. Creating this new form of infrastructure will be crucial to building forward better from COVID-19, bridging social capital and cohesion, and strengthening civic legitimacy, collective agency, and resilience. Similarly, this work could be linked to transformative platforms and narratives like the EmergencE Room5, a collaborative environment for emergent initiatives that nurture deep, structural transition. This could enable participatory social infrastructure to foster a culture of participation and provide the necessary foundation to grow radically inclusive, cohesive, resilient, and vibrant communities.

There is a rich history to the Participatory City movement - originating in the UK, led by the Participatory City Foundation. During 2019 and 2020, Participatory City became international by establishing social research and development (Social R&D) sandboxes in Montreal, Halifax, and Toronto with Participatory Canada. This work was supported by the J.W. McConnell and Participatory City Foundations, with support from the Government of Canada (Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) Investment Readiness Program6) and with coalitions of local partners.

1 European Commission (September 9, 2020) “Strategic Foresight Report - Charting the Course towards a more resilient Europe” https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/strategic-planning/strategicforesight/2020-strategic-foresight-report_en 2 Department of Finance Canada (2020) “Fall Economic Statement 2020, Supporting Canadian and Fighting COVID-19,” https://www.budget.gc.ca/fes-eea/2020/home-accueil-en.html 3 Department of Finance Canada (2020) “Fall Economic Statement 2020, Building Back Better” https://www.budget.gc.ca/fes-eea/2020/themes/building-back-better-rebatir-mieux-en.html 4 Government of Canada through Infrastructure Canada with Community Foundations of Canada (2021) “Canadian Healthy Communities Initiative” https://www.infrastructure.gc.ca/chci-iccs/indexeng.html 5 To learn more, please visit https://emergenceroom.net/ 6 Employment and Social Development Canada (2019), “Investment Readiness Program” https:// www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/programs/social-innovation-social-finance/ investment-readiness.html

Participatory City UK

Participatory City has completed its fourth year of the ‘Every One Every Day’ initiative which is grounded in eleven years of research and deep engagement with ‘participation culture’ from new types of peer-to-peer initiatives that are inspired from around the world. The Participatory City approach brings residents of Barking and Dagenham, a borough in London, together to build practical everyday projects that create friendships, and healthy, sustainable, thriving communities. By making better use of spaces, resources, skills and knowledge, the Participatory City approach enables connected and supported collections of activities to effect change. It aims to be the first large scale, inclusive, practical participatory ecosystem.

The Participatory City approach relies on a support platform as a collection of coordinated and shared infrastructure and a participatory ecosystem that is a collection of many and varied practical projects and businesses (see Figure 1).

After evaluating the outcomes from year two of Every One Every Day, it was found that practical participation cultivates individual agency. The collective effects of many smaller actions and participation are needed to generate collective impact. The year 2 learnings7 from Participatory City, UK also demonstrate that if some or all of the following conditions can be met in a place, the Participatory City approach can drive towards positive and sustained community impact:

• High evidence of need, • Sufficient population density for peer-to-peer networks and network effects, • A determination to find new ways of co-producing outcomes, • A willingness to take risks on the part of funders, officials and politicians, • Possible experience of having tried other approaches without success, • A local champion or team willing to make the local case and co-ordinate decision-making, and • An understanding and appreciation of the possible benefits of participatory culture.

EVERY ONE EVERY DAY

Began as a five-year initiative, formed out of a partnership between Participatory City and Barking and Dagenham Council, and it is the largest participatory project of its kind in the country. Enabling the community to work together in tackling disadvantage, inequality, loneliness and isolation in the London borough of Barking and Dagenham. These underlying community conditions could extend to implementing the Participatory City approach in other cities. The positive possibilities of the program have driven interest to test the approach, to build a global, connected learning architecture and school, and start by scaling impact in Canada. Figure 2 demonstrates the current global interest in establishing different cities as part of the Here&Now School of Participatory Systems and Design.

PRACTICAL PARTICIPATORY ECOSYSTEM

A Practical participatory ecosystem develops organically, is unpredictable in form, and is rooted in the shifting of interrelationships of many diverse and distinct parts (multiple residents joining and leaving, and projects emerging, thriving, replicating and stopping at a constant basis). Residents work on practical, everyday projects that are useful for them. This is often referred to as the “Participatory City approach.”

HERE&NOW SCHOOL

Is the new school of participatory systems and designs established by Participatory City Foundation bringing together all the research, knowledge and learning.

SOCIAL (OR CIVIC) INFRASTRUCTURE

The publicly-accessible amenities, systems, physical places, spaces, platforms, services and organizations that shape how people interact, and which can support collective life.

Participatory Canada

The McConnell Foundation and others in Canada started to take notice of the success of the UK Participatory City experiments. In 2019, Participatory City UK, working in partnership with the McConnell Foundation, began conversations with partners in three Canadian cities, Halifax, Montreal, and Toronto, seeding an intention and creating a plan to develop, learn and explore feasibility of prototypes during a Social R&D phase. Throughout 2020 and early 2021, challenges emerged in implementation and learning due to the global COVID-19 pandemic resulting in significant changes to planning.

Firstly, the opportunity to visit Barking and Dagenham to learn through an arranged Study Trip became impossible. Secondly, COVID-19 encouraged the teams to consider designing and developing small live prototypes instead of larger, in-person activities. This made the feasibility testing more real, with the potential to start creating impact in these neighbourhoods during this phase of development.

The live prototypes were designed to maximise learning opportunities and to share knowledge and practices between the three cities. This was completed with an aim to test local responses to participation culture and to assess the emerging opportunities for building this type of participatory social infrastructure in these neighborhoods long term. The city teams worked closely through digital means to create these prototypes during this exploration phase in the three Participatory Canada cities, with a longer term goal of building each city into a learning hub to effectively scale the Participatory City approach in Canada.

Each city has brought a unique structure and perspective to the Participatory Canada initiative. Halifax is leveraging the platform to conduct meaningful reconciliation through participation, Montreal is building strong relationships with local governments and alignment with the Participatory City approach, and Toronto is using their deep networks and physical space for community experiments.

Figure 2 - Potential global learning campuses for the Participatory City approach at the Here&Now School of Participation Systems and Design