Listening to citizens’ concerns and needs, opening up the debate and drafting policies that are grounded in reality. This is the sense in which the city plans are designed in a participatory manner. And what does citizen participation bring to the drafting of the city plans?
“Citizens need to be brought in to help address the issues that affect them, to make it a collective responsibility.” Dani de Torres, expert in intercultural policies, has been working on the Barcelona interculturality plan 2021-2030 and explains that getting citizens involved in the debate on what the plans should be like has served to ensure “as many people as possible can make it their own” and “that those who approve it are not removed from the everyday reality of the city”.
He also said that involving the highest possible number of stakeholders and ensuring maximum diversity, helps with the sustainability of the policies approved by the Administration. “If we include a diverse range of voices and perspectives and seek consensus, it is less likely that the proposal will be skewed or biased or will need changing in the short term.”
However, Dani de Torres explains: “It is not often that municipal plans incorporate multiple voices through participatory processes”, as is the case in Barcelona. In fact the Barcelona Interculturality Plan is one of the pioneers: the previous plan, from 2010, was drawn up following a citizen participation process.
Ten years on, in 2020, the drafting of a new plan got under way, completed in May 2021. “A new plan was needed, one that was useful and adjusted to the reality of today’s city, which in ten years has changed a lot with regard to interculturality”, says Núria Serra, head of the Department for Interculturality and Religious Pluralism.
Participation adapted to the objectives of each plan
Oriol Recasens works in the Department of Sciences and Universities, which promotes the Barcelona Science Plan 2020-2023. This plan was approved on 10 March 2020, but with the outbreak of the pandemic, the reality and needs of the city changed with regard to science policy. “The state of alert turned everything on its head”, says Recasens, “and we took this situation as an opportunity to update the plan.”
Once new proposals had been gathered from entities from Barcelona’s scientific community (research centres, chancellors from the city’s public universities, advisory councils) “we became aware of the need to also include the voices of citizens”. And this was done in a way never before done, explains Oriol Recasens: uploading the document to the Decidim Barcelona portal and opening it to amendments.
Relaunching the Science Plan, citizens were encouraged to interact with the text, to review it and make suggestions and proposals directly”. People such as teaching staff and promoters of civic centres, among others, have been able to have their say. And even though they don’t strictly work in the field of science, they have had a lot to contribute from their lines of work.
With regard to the participatory process used for the Barcelona Interculturality Plan, a range of participation methods have been used. Núria Serra lists a few of them: “From sessions with organisations and collectives working on interculturality-related matters, and open sessions with non-organised citizens, to surveys and comments posted on the Decidim Barcelona portal.” Serra highlights the participation of municipal employees in this process, which has enabled the administration to listen, beyond the theories and the debate within the institution, “to people who work on the frontline” in direct contact with citizens.
And all of this, online. For the Barcelona Interculturality Plan, participation was completely virtual, due to the health measures put in place as a result of Covid-19. “We tried to make the most of the fact that we were connected virtually”, says Núria Serra.
New issues on the table
Oriol Recasens explains that citizen participation “has added a new layer to the academic proposals previously put forward” in the Science Plan. Proposals like the need to invest in the emerging scientific community of young people and students or to make feminism a key perspective, particularly given the importance that feminist analysis and proposals have had during the pandemic.
The contributions of local residents have also been very important in drafting the Interculturality Plan. For example, the emphasis on the need for a cultural and educational programme which incorporates diversity in all its forms, right across the board: from museums to sports centres.
Citizen participation is still going on in the definition of other city plans. This is the case of the Change for the Climate 2030 plan and the new Plan for Gender Justice which, as in previous cases, uses the Decidim Barcelona digital platform as a central space for citizen participation.