It Takes a City
Our friends Flavio and Stefania have brought together stories of participation and democracy from across four continents. In this episode, they interview the pioneering Portuguese politician Graça Fonseca about her time as Deputy Mayor of Lisbon - and about that city’s participatory budget, which every years sees millions of euros directly allocated to citizen ideas by citizen vote.
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Transcript
This time on how to save democracy, we're sharing an episode of the It Takes a City podcast hosted by our friends, Stefania and Flavio. They gather stories from around the world of democracy at a city scale. And in this episode, they tackle the subject of Lisbon's participatory budget. We thought you might like it.
We are in a global democratic crisis. Elections around the world send a clear message. The system is not working.
Hi. I'm Stefania, an advocate for human rights and resilient democracies from Budapest, Hungary. And I'm
Flavio, social innovator and entrepreneur working on public administration and government issues from Rome and Italy.
This is It Takes a City, telling stories of participation and democracy.
Lot of We're here with, Graca Fonseca, who has been among many other things, the deputy mayor of Lisbon with a specific agenda on participatory budgeting. And participatory budgeting is, we could say, almost an old concept. It's been around, from the late eighties. And what it means in practice, and Graca, correct me if you have a different view, is, a tool, a way, a process to engage citizens in how a city or we could even imagine a bigger budget, a wider budget is spent. Which was the moment, Where were you when you realized that this could be something relevant, that you had to do participatory budgeting at home in Lisbon?
Hello. Thank you for the invitation. Glad to be here. Portugal and Lisbon was really living, really harsh financial times because, of course Yeah. The country and the city was hit hard by the financial crisis. And, I had several areas of government. I had the idea of economy and innovation. I had the area of education, and I also had the area of civic engagement. So the if you want the participatory democracy tools. Okay? Yeah. And for me and for us, but really for me and for my team at that time, was really something very important while the city was passing to a really difficult, actually depressing times. Now people come to Lisbon and see a vibrant city with, you know, all kind of urban incubation, cosmopolitan, a lot of cycle lanes and green areas, but at the time, it was not like that. City was really going down. There was really a lot of people suffering, from the financial crisis. A lot of jobs were at risk. So participatory budget for us was an important tool to engage people for, if you want, the next phase, next step of the city. We wanted to rebuild the city in its urban life, economic dimension, social cohesion, so we wanted to be an engaged process. Yeah. Now when looking back, and for me that's, you know, I was there for all those years, many of the things that you, see in Lisbon, somewhere along the way, they have a citizen's idea.
I just love it. I just wanna make a comment on this that, that was a harsh financial situation. Mhmm. And for many politicians and decision makers, the instinct is like, okay. I keep the money. I keep the control while you were deciding the other way. Like, I will give out some control to the citizens. Yeah. And I think this is something that is really curious about participation.
Yeah. And at that time, it was really, a big amount, if you want, a big percentage of the city council budget. Because at that time, the city council was not really rich. Mhmm. For you to have an idea, the annual budget was around, €500,000,000, k, for the old city. And the amount of participatory, budget was 5,000,000. So it's around 1% of the total of the budgets. Yeah. And actually going to your point, Stefan, it's much more than people being a part of the ideas of the city or where the city or where people want the city to go. Actually, it's about sharing power. And I really like to stress this part because it's about those that were elected, and I was elected to city government, so I was part of the representative democracy. Right? And I had legitimacy to take decisions. I was elected to do that. Right? But it's about sharing that power with citizens and giving them the direct power Yeah. To decide where to put the money if you want, where to invest.
What are the basics of the project? When did you start it? Did you envisage it as a long term project from day one? This kind of, public policy
process is important to have some stability, some long time if you want. It takes time to bring people here to, reach the gap of trust. It takes time for people start seeing the results of, the participatory budget. Their choices? So I was in City Council between 2009 and 2015. So it's six years, that's I learned participatory budget in Lisbon. So participatory budget basically, if you want four moments, four layers, All important. Right? But the first one was citizens present ideas. So it was the part where not in general terms people say, okay, I want the city to be more green. No. What was asked from people was, okay, you have €5,000,000, you can present ideas in whatever area you want, education, ports, green, public space, transport, whatever you want, okay, with certain rules. So the rules were approved by city government. It was really transparent, clear, and so citizens presented the idea. I want a new basket camp in the front riverside, imagine. Or I want a children playground in my neighborhood. People presented ideas. Okay? Second step, the civil servants, so the several departments within the city council of Lisbon, analyzed all the ideas of citizens. And if you want, transform those ideas into projects, because usually people don't know how much is the investment on the school. Okay? They don't know. Yeah. Not even me. I don't know. They're hard to assess. Yeah. Yeah. Right? So but but you need to transform one idea into a project, in a project of public investment. Right? So that was step two. Mhmm. Public servants would pick ideas, transform it into project with a chronogram, with a calendar, with a budget.
And so every single idea would be worked through Yeah. Or you had already a preselection of the ideas? No. No. Okay. No preselection. Do you have an idea how many were there? Each year. It depends. But 400,
500, always around that. Yeah. What could happen was that in many cases, for instance, imagine you have two similar ideas for the same neighborhood. So the civil servants and the departments would emerge the proposal, the ideas, and it was only one. Imagine it's happened a lot. Right. Or in some circumstances, the idea was not viable. Imagine someone proposed to occupy a private building. We cannot do that. So that was step two, and all ideas were analyzed by departments of city council. And then the project, so what is the result of the technical analysis by civil servants of the idea, then projects were put to vote. Okay? And that was the third step, voting by citizens, choosing would they like to, become real within all the projects that were, in the voting periods. Okay? Usually, the voting will happen through online or text message. Many years, we use the text message. For people, it's much more easier, and we can control it in the same way as web, so we just use it. And then the fourth and really important is implementation period. So what would happen was all the most voted projects up to $5,000,000 of investment, because each project had its own budget, right? So up to $5,000,000 all the most voted projects were then incorporated into the mission of the respective departments. Mhmm. So urban space, education, sports, youth. So it depend, of course, on the areas of the projects. K. And then there was a permanent consultation with citizens on how the implementation was going, where we were, what do we need. We would sometimes talk with citizens that, proposed that idea and ask, okay. So what did you mean by this?
Do you have an estimate on how much you spent on top of that on running the program?
Yeah. It was not really expensive because mainly, we work with, our teams in city council, so civil servants and my team, my my political team at that time. Of course, we had a lot of strange ideas and crazy ideas across the city to get more people, but I would say it would take around, I would say, I think it was around 100 to €100,000, something like that. Of course, I'm not putting here the initial investments, for instance, in a platform, in a technological platform, but it was really not that expensive.
Did you spend that all on advertisement and outreach?
No. That was really one of the most challenging tasks we had. It was communication. Nowadays, it's even worse, actually, but at that time, it already was a challenge because, people have so many contents, information. You are exposed to so much noise since the beginning of your day until the moment that you go to bed, that it's really difficult to get a piece of information to the people and say, Listen, you can be a part of this, come to this place, and be in this participatory assembly tonight. What for us was more effective was, of course, we as a city council, we have local infrastructures for communication. So, for instance, public urban, spaces where city has contents to institutional information, for instance. We partner with a lot of stakeholders in the city, like, parishes, universities, local associations, NGOs, you name it. Sunny years, we even have kind of a door to door team in Sunny Neighbors with some flyer and some information for, okay, tonight we'll be here. So, you know, just, appear with your ideas. We tried everything, basically, but we didn't spend that much on that because we had internal resources to do it. The best way to interact with people is where they are, where they pass through, where they go to their coffee, whatever. So we tried some years to, have initiatives like, we decided to do this giant wall of colorful Post Its in a museum downtown, and each Post It was an idea for Lisbon that citizens passing through the main square could live. Right? So they were just, you know, going to restaurants or to the coffee or somewhere, and we're like, do you want to leave an idea for Lisbon? K. This is the big wall of pasties. Your idea will be there.
How did the population that was participating in the budgeting change?
We have two demographics, if you want, or two groups. Mhmm. First is the, more organized ones. I know that most of the proposals for cycle lanes came from all the groups that, you know Cyclists. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Then you have a second group that is just, you know, inorganic movements. It's people that, you know, are more active in terms of civic engagement. They are part of local associations. They like to have an opinion on everything about the public life. And, basically, those were the proposal or imagined. Each year, there were, for instance, a lot of new playground areas for kids in neighborhoods because it was something that people really felt the need in the area where they live for kids to go to play, for grandparents to go with their kids. There's a lot of new playgrounds in the city that came from there. Also, support areas like I was mentioning, education hubs, a lot of entrepreneur, creative spaces, all of that. Maybe in this, second group, you have a second demographic that is older people Okay. That are really an important part of the city and of the life in the city. And there, you have a lot of things concerned with, you know, quality of life. Lisbon is a very, high heeled,
city. Yeah. I was thinking about the Yeah. Accessibility.
Accessibility. There's there was a lot of proposals about accessibility for, older people, for people with, some mobility difficulties.
I hear you list a lot of groups, and it's very diverse. But I'm really curious about a specific group, poor people, economically vulnerable people. Did you have any success in involving them into this, or were there any other initiatives at the municipality to involve those people's voices?
We did a lot of participatory assemblies Mhmm. And participatory encounters. Mhmm. And we would go to all the different areas in the city. And in many areas, it was socially and economically more deprived areas. Okay? Right. So we did it in several areas, and it was, of course, a challenge to bring those people because, you know, it's where you encounter more distrust, more distant relations. It's where you find more anger, actually. Yeah. So it is a challenge in many ways, but, we went there, and we we worked with several local partners to do it. But in Lisbon, there was also another project. I was not leading that one, but it was interconnected. That was what we call the BIP SIP. So it's it was priority neighborhoods. So the city council identifies some priority neighborhoods, areas more socially and economically and urbanistically deprived, and those were defined as priority neighborhoods. Okay? And there was this specific budget for each of these priority neighborhoods, and people of those neighborhoods proposed ideas and chose what they wanted.
Have you been able to achieve any change?
If you have real political will to do participatory budget, that is to say, if it's not something just for campaign or to be a good picture for you. Cosmetic. Yeah. If it is real. K? And this is important. K? So people need to feel it that you are there, and you are exposed to their critics and their distress and their What are you doing here? You are all the same. So people need to feel that all of that they can tell you, and still you remain there. So first, you have to really gain people's stress. Second, if you do it in a very transparent and clear approach, that is to say, these are the rules, we will follow by these rules, and if we do not follow these rules, you are entitled to then say whatever you want about the process and about us. Okay? But until then, this is our commitment and we ask you to trust us. Mhmm. And this, across time, that would start changing. There's a lot of people, for instance, that, each year when the voting ended and, so we did this, you know, public ceremony, inviting everybody, coming here, just announcing who are the most of the projects, who are the people, giving them the stage, it's up to you, and so on and so on. And in the last years that I was in city council, there was a lot of people that were there in this, closing ceremony that it was their third time trying to have a most floated proposal on participatory budget, which means that they didn't give up. Because what I always told them is that democracy is hard. You need to have a good idea, you need to campaign for it, you need to convince your friends, your neighbors, whatever he wants to vote in you. So this was something that started to change the way that people engage in the process, that started the way that people saw democracy and politicians work because they also had to campaign for that. And democracy costs. It takes time, right? And then there was another thing that I think is really important in this process is the relation between civil servant and citizens and vice versa. We talk a lot about the distress between citizens and politicians. We don't talk so much the distress between citizens and public services, and the state, and the education, and health services, and everything. Exactly. So we designed a team of civil servants and political advisers. My political team was leading that team. And each department and each, member of governments had one representative in this group. Okay? And this group was responsible for managing the participatory budget. And it was also responsible for being there face to face with citizens and explain why, for instance, the project was delayed and the reasons why. And it was a face to face. And the idea was that it is important for citizens to understand that civil servants also face difficulties in their work, and it's not always easy. They have bureaucratic problems, they have financial problems, they have leadership problems, many problems in doing their job. Right? And people really need to understand that. It's not because they don't want to do it. It's because sometimes they really don't have the conditions to do it. And on the other way around, it is important for civil servants to understand that people just want an answer even if it's no.
Do you have any, you know, data that really give a feel of all this change for our listeners?
There are not many international studies about the social, political, or economic impacts of participatory budget. There are some, but not many. Yeah. There are some studies about participatory budget in Portugal, but not with many data. My data, to give you an example, when we started, so 2009
Mhmm.
We had around, five hundred's proposal. And if I'm not mistaken, around 2,100, something like that, votes in that year. Right? So 2,000 people voted. In 2016, so, I left in '15. So 2016, we had around the same amount of projects, but we had around 50,000 votes. So 50,000 people voted.
What was the big, big headache you had when you were, you know, starting off?
How to build sufficient trust and how to build a project that is resilient enough to survive you. I know that this kind of projects really depends on political leadership in that moment. And the mayor was a really committed person with this, so I had his back, if you want. And all the government was really committed with this. But I know that once the elections change elites, the probability of this kind of projects die are really high. It is a matter of, giving people the sense of this is important for us. It's not important in a political context. It is important for us. If people feel that this is there, it will mean that even when government changes, they will be the best ambassadors to say, listen, you might be new here, but we want these commitments to continue.
What would be your advice to someone who's starting?
Don't be comfortable. Challenge each year what you are doing. You have to be creative. You really have to put your imagination to work. Work with creatives, work with artists, work with the storytellers. Don't just go for the people from economics, from social sciences. I mean, bring all of those, but bring artists, bring creative, bring storytellers because, you know, you need to, be above all the noise and all the difficulties and all the complexities of contemporary societies. Yeah. And you need to find new ways to develop participatory democracy tools that will overcome this distress between people. Terrific. Thank you. That was great, Grazia.
So where do we go from here? Let's hear from an expert sharing their view.
I'm Katie Rubin, and I'm a legislative theater practitioner and founder of the People Act hub for creative civic practice based here in The UK. And I loved hearing Graca talk about the growth of participatory budgeting in Lisbon. And her story made me think about a couple of of things that really connect legislative theater and participatory budgeting, which are both part of the ecosystem of participatory democracy, different ways that citizens can identify challenges in their neighborhoods or in their communities and identify solutions and be part of enacting those solutions together with leaders, with politicians, with civil servants. The first thing it made me think about was trust. Graca talked a lot about the need to rebuild trust and how that happens slowly. And I think about, in legislative theater, trust develops in kind of three stages, and I saw that happening in her examples from PB, from participatory budgeting as well. First, we need a shared understanding of the problems. And Graca talked about the the civil servants needed to be at in the neighborhoods to be exposed to the critique of the citizens, to hear their distrust, to build that shared understanding of the problems together. But that's just the first step that we see. We we we understand that our leaders and our citizens have a similar understanding of what's going wrong. Then we need a shared experience of problem solving. In legislative theater, that's about hands on testing, really kind of improvising what will happen if we try this policy solution or that policy solution. In the PB process, it was about creating and and following the transparent and clear rules of PB together and actually citizens and policymakers showing up, putting ideas out there, working side by side to follow the rules, and feeling like we're co owners of the rules. And the last ingredient, if you will, of trust, to my mind, is a shared risk that citizens and or residents and civil servants and politicians take a shared risk that they both understand what each other are up against, citizens having to live in the world, having to deal with the challenges, let's say, in Lisbon, you know, economic challenges. But civil servants also, as Graca said, have a lot to face. And for citizens to be able to understand that and everyone to be able to kind of meet each other where they're at with an understanding of their shared risk. That really builds trust. And I love how in that story, part of also building the trust was communicating powerfully about the opportunity to to identify and spend money together. And Graca really talked about cutting above the noise and the need for artists and storytellers to be able to communicate differently, to inspire people, to reimagine their communities, their neighborhoods, their entire democratic process, to reimagine a budget, and that artists are key. And I think we overlook this too much. Of course, I'm biased. But that arts the arts and the creative methods are key to bringing people together, to opening up creative problem solving, and to approaching democratic processes with joy, to making them irresistible. The last thing that I loved about this story was just a reminder, which I think we can never forget, that there might be opportunity in crisis. Sometimes we say in legislative theater, the best time to do these kinds of processes is when everyone is mad at each other because that's an opportunity to say, let's do things really differently. The way we've been doing it so far isn't working. And, again, in this participatory budgeting story, the city said, you know what? We're really having a financial crisis. All kinds of social challenges happening in the city. We must do something differently. That's an opportunity for an elected official or a civil servant to say, let's open up public spending to the entire city of Lisbon. I loved hearing about that story. It's so exciting, and I would love to see that kind of boldness of risk taking of creative thinking replicated in cities all around the world.
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