Urban Dialog
About this good practice
Urban development in Hungary has traditionally been a top-down process. Although joining the EU brought many beneficial changes in this regard – e.g. citizen surveys are more common in the planning stage –, continuous dialogue (not to mention co-creation) between the citizens and the city is still rare.
Urban Dialog is a community-based online urban development platform where users without registration can browse running projects uploaded by the municipality, follow their progress and participate in related surveys – after a free registration, they can also evaluate and comment on them and even initiate new ones.
Dialogues can be searched by:
• Initiator (community- or municipality-led)
• Stage (planned or implemented projects)
• Area (i.e. city district)
• Topic (culture, green areas, cycling, sports, etc.)
The interactive interface enables urban developers, city officials to enter into conversation with their target groups – it gives local governments the opportunity to present their plans before/during implementation in an innovative way, starting a dialogue prior to development which promotes greater social support. For them, the online tool automatically generates problem, value and desire maps based on the survey responses.
The platform also supports the citizens to share their ideas with the municipality, taking the initiative – several community-based projects were implemented since launching the platform.
Resources needed
IT: The platform needs a website (and/or an app) to run.
HR: Someone (but most likely several people) from the city must have access to upload new plans/projects continuously and follow up on the responses and also to check the ideas generated by the citizens; the chat also needs moderation.
Evidence of success
This innovative digital tool facilitates the real participation of citizens in identifying local development needs and projects. A recent example: re-designing the largest public park in Budapest (Népliget) was done by creating a survey on the platform which concluded with almost 4000 answers from the local citizens around the location – their suggestions were included in the plans.
Potential for learning or transfer
The proper use of a platform like this can make consultation processes more efficient, more meaningful and less expensive. In addition, it can also contribute to encouraging the participation of younger generations in urban development. Creating the platform itself from the technical side can be resource-intensive at first, but the potential benefits will greatly outweigh the initial investment. As a digital solution, it is highly transferable – the platform can be designed with a different look based on the given municipality’s needs, but it will still work under the same universal principles. It’s important to mention that larger cities (with 50 000+ citizens) will probably get more use out of it than smaller settlements where personal meetings, workshops and face-to-face citizen forums might be more effective.
Further information
Good practice owner
You can contact the good practice owner below for more detailed information.