Participatory budgeting

To Achieve Budget Justice, Cities Must Be Ready For The Mess

December 16, 2025 Celina Su, Next City. Create! Democracy, New York City (NYC), Participatory budgeting, Urban Planning

How might everyday city residents begin to demand transparent, equitable city budgets and fight austerity? In my book “Budget Justice: On Building Grassroots Politics and Solidarities,” I examine real-life struggles for city budgets that give everyone, especially those from historically marginalized communities, resources and power to address their needs. Part of the book draws upon a decade of fieldwork on participatory budgeting —in which everyday residents, not just elected officials and civil servants, allocate public funds. Since the 1990s, more than 11,000 cities and communities around the world have turned to participatory budgeting to hold local governments accountable.

Participatory Budgeting Includes Community Members In Public Funding

March 18, 2025 Damon Orion, Resilience. Create! Brazil, Democracy, History, Participatory budgeting, Worker Rights and Jobs

In 1989, one-third of the inhabitants of Porto Alegre, Brazil, lived in impoverished regions on the fringes of the city, cut off from sanitation, clean water, medical facilities, and other essential resources. In response, the Brazilian Workers’ Party created participatory budgeting (PB), a citizen engagement process that enables community members to decide how to use a portion of public funds. A 2007 report by the North American Congress on Latin America stated that this brought treated water to 99 percent of Porto Alegre’s population, expanded the sewer system’s reach from 46 percent in 1989 to 86 percent of the city, led to the construction of more than 50 schools from around 1997 to 2007, decreased truancy from 9 to less than 1 percent, and helped double the number of students attending university from 1989 to 1995.

How To Start Participatory Budgeting In Your City

July 23, 2024 Lerner Hadden, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Austerity, Democracy, New Economy, Participatory budgeting

Has your city been making cuts to schools, libraries, firefighters, and social services that you are not happy with? Think you could do a better job managing the budget? There is a way in which you can have that opportunity through a process called “participatory budgeting (PB).” Currently, residents of over 7,000 cities around the world are deciding how to spend their taxpayer dollars, and you could follow their lead by starting PB in your city. What Is Participatory Budgeting? In 1989, the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre developed a new model of democratic participation, which has become known internationally as participatory budgeting (PB). Through this process, community members directly decide how to spend a portion of a public budget.

In Philly, The People’s Budget Increases Civic Engagement And Moves Money

June 24, 2024 Ryan Moser, Next City. Create! City Government, Participatory budgeting, Pennsylvania, People's budget, Philadelphia

If you’ve walked through LOVE Park during May and June the last two years, you have undoubtedly seen a long shipping container anchored in the northwest corner of JFK Plaza, a cherry-red beacon sitting in the shadow of Philadelphia’s historic City Hall. Part public art installation and part information center, the corten steel box is the temporary office of The People’s Budget, one piece of an initiative led by artist Phoebe Bachman of Mural Arts of Philadelphia, and funded by the City of Philadelphia. Founded in 2020, The People’s Budget empowers Philadelphians to participate in the city’s yearly budget process and join the conversation to decide where city funds are spent.

The Surprising Link Between Budgeting And Good Health

March 27, 2024 Carl Smith, Governing. Create! Civic Engagement, Governance, health, Participatory budgeting

The health department in Tacoma-Pierce County, Wash., is always looking for ways to improve public health outcomes. To find out what might work best, the department tried something that might sound obvious, but isn’t always done. Namely, asking members of the public for their input about what's most important. Too often, health officials are prescriptive, coming into communities they may know little about and applying a standard intervention that might not match local needs, says Benjii Bittle, director of the Public Health Centers for Excellence.

Transformation Through Sociocracy And Participatory Budgeting

June 21, 2023 Sociocracy For All, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Governance, New Economy, Participatory budgeting, Sociocracy

Kristina Banks and Ingrid Haftel from the Participatory Budgeting Project share reflections on the intersections between sociocracy and participatory budgeting (PB)--and how they are experiencing the transformative power of this shared governance systemically, organizationally, and individually.

The Digital Tools Unlocking Democracy In Our Cities

March 12, 2023 Hollie Russon Gilman and Grace Levin, Next City. Create! Cities, Direct Democracy, Participatory budgeting, Science and technology

Digitization. It’s the threat that modern democracies, and especially cities, must solve – at least according to current dialogues on digital regulation. Many of the social and political problems our cities face today have been exacerbated by technology. Social media and other digital tools have increased the spread of misinformation and overall weakened public trust in our civic, social and political institutions. Recent developments in virtual reality and artificial intelligence raise new concerns for issues around surveillance, bias, automation and exploitation, especially with increasing public scrutiny on technology giants like Meta and Google.

How Cities Use Participatory Budgeting To Build Place

December 20, 2022 Nancy Kwak, Next City. Create! Budgets, Cities, Democracy, Participatory budgeting

Cities around the world today are beset with problems of unequal development and spatial inequality. While the details of American suburban sprawl and urban decline might be unique to this country, the broader struggle over deeply unequal, segregated cities and regions is, unfortunately, one experienced around the world. Whether in the spreading rustbelts across shrinking industrial cities or in the mega cities and informal communities of the Global South, inequality is played out at the level of neighborhood and street — and it is visible everywhere. At the root of these struggles over physical spaces and the right to the city are questions of governance that are local yet also global: How should governments, residents, business interests, nonprofit organizations, and others work together in ways that produce more meaningful, just, and prosperous connections between people and places?

Ten Years Of Citizens Assemblies

December 6, 2022 MZ Maribor (Iniciativa Mestni Zbor) and Alexandria Shaner, Znet. Create! Participatory budgeting, Participatory Democracy, People's Assembly, Slovenia

The assemblies started to happen in the times when there was a general feeling (in Europe) that everything was possible. After the economic crisis, municipalist movements came to life and older ideas of different political and economic systems (socialism, communism) became a possibility again. People suddenly realized that representative democracy really doesn’t work and that alternative ways of decision making closer to communities are needed. This new optimistic wave of democracy was extremely strong in Maribor, which meant that a lot of people wanted to be part of the change. This resulted in a really high level of participation at citizens’ assemblies at the beginning. However, it must be said that even then mostly older generations, who still remember how self-management (at the workplace and at the municipal/city districts level) worked in Yugoslavia participated.

It’s Time To Democratize City Budgets

October 4, 2021 Editors, In These Times. Create! Cities, City Budget, Democracy, Participatory budgeting

Porto Alegre’s famous PB experiment put the city’s budget in the hands of its citizens (and included a sophisticated process to ensure broad participation), but more usually, PB has been implemented to make decisions within just a single agency or a local district. And unless robust outreach is built into the process, PB can become the domain of neighborhood busybodies already adept at advocating for themselves through local politics. That could be why it’s not better known! But PB does have benefits regardless. It’s one way to include people unable to vote in a decision-making process, such as undocumented immigrants and teens. And research shows PB increases voter engagement during formal elections. The process also lifts the veil on public finances, even if just to show how unequal they are.

Investments Should Be ‘Determined By The Community’

October 3, 2020 Gee and Ursula Show, My Northwest. Create! Black America, Participatory budgeting, Reparations, Seattle

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan is pledging $100 million from the city’s general fund to invest in communities of color. But where is that money going to go? And who is going to advise the mayor’s office on how it should be spent? Sean Goode, the executive director of Choose 180, a local organization that provides alternatives to incarceration for young people, was asked to be part of the task force that will look into how this money should be spent. He has since declined the invitation.

Black Power Through Participatory Budgeting

June 5, 2020 Rossanna Mercedes, Medium. Create! Economic Democracy, New Economy, North Carolina, Participatory budgeting

I’ve spent the last two and half years learning and implementing participatory budgeting in New York City, first from within the New York City Council and now as a staff member of Participatory Budgeting Project. As members of Black Youth Project 100, I and my colleague Maria Hadden have presented on participatory budgeting as a policy for Black self-determination and liberation on various occasions and to varying audiences. Can you imagine my excitement when, on August 1st, The Movement for Black Lives released a robust policy agenda titled A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom and Justice — and included a bold solution for more community control through participatory budgeting? Contained in the policy agenda are some things we want to see get done.

Want To Improve Education? Empower The Students.

January 11, 2019 Shari Davis and Dylan Welch, Medium.com Create! Budgets, Education, Participatory budgeting, Schools, Students

Autumn is here — and with it, a renewed conversation about how educators, parents, and communities improve their students’ education. Often in this discussion, solutions come down from on high through public officials or people within the educational system. This fall, visionary school leaders will be challenging that top-down norm by showing that empowering students and families to directly decide what their schools need, through participatory budgeting (PB), can drastically improve the quality of their schooling. What is PB? Instead of government and school officials making every budgetary decision, PB gives real people real power over budget decisions in their schools and communities.

How Portugal Launched The World’s First National Participatory Budget

November 2, 2018 Staff, Govinsider.asia Create! Funding, New Economy, Participatory budgeting, Portugal

Citizens in Portugal vote on how public funding is spent on national and regional projects, in the world’s first participatory budgeting scheme of its kind. The project is led by the Administrative Modernisation Agency to build trust among citizens and bring them into government. It was awarded the Best Citizen Engagement award at the recent Innovation Labs World hosted by GovInsider. The Portugal Participatory Budget (PPB) allows citizens to present investment proposals and then choose, through transparent and open voting, which projects should be funded and implemented. The budgeting process has two main phases: citizens first present budget proposals via the PPB’s online portal or in person at participative meetings held across Portugal.

Port Allegre Shows How Participatory Budgeting Works

September 23, 2018 By Steve Rushton, Occupy.com Create! Brazil, New Economy, Participatory budgeting

Porto Alegre in Brazil is the world's first city where residents participate in budgeting decisions, having done so since 1989. But participatory democracy traces far further back. The indigenous Iroquois Confederacy co-participated in that nation's economic decisions. Now, three decades since Porto Alegre brought this wisdom to non-indigenous politics, the practice has become widespread with over 3,000 municipalities worldwide using participatory budgeting to make financial choices for their communities.

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