The Catalan capital launches the second edition of the participatory budgets, which allows citizens to decide on which projects in the districts a total of 30 million euros from the municipal budget should be invested over the next four years (2024-2027).
The process will be developed through the digital platform decidim.barcelona and will last until April. The first phase, of debate and collection of proposals, will last until November, with face-to-face sessions in all the city's neighbourhoods.
Once the project proposal phase has been completed, a technical assessment will be made of the projects presented to evaluate their viability, which will be completed in January 2025. Citizens will then be able to vote on which initiatives they consider to be the most important. The 25 proposals with the most support from each district will go on to the next phase, which will be worked on by municipal technicians.
In April 2025, the finalist proposals will be voted on via the decidim.barcelona platform or the in-person support points. The winning proposals will be implemented by 2027.
What projects can be submitted?
Projects of general interest and municipal competence that meet a series of requirements will be accepted: that they can be executed within the mandate, that they have a specific purpose, that they follow sustainability criteria and that they are not contrary to programmes, plans or urban development projects that have already been approved. The initiatives are divided into three categories:
Improvement of public space: projects for the creation or improvement of green areas, or the improvement or transformation of streets, sports facilities or street furniture. Each project must have a minimum budget of 100,000 euros and a maximum of half of the budget allocated to the district.
Improvement of municipal facilities: improvements in accessibility, energy efficiency, provision of furniture or computer equipment or installation of shaded areas. The minimum budget for this category of projects is 50,000 euros, and the maximum is half of the budget allocated to the district.
Acquisition and rehabilitation of assets: this includes rehabilitation projects, public housing projects and the acquisition of land or premises for public use. They must have a minimum budget of 50,000 euros and a maximum of half of the budget allocated to the district.
The distribution of the 30 million euros foreseen for the participatory budgets has been made by districts and neighbourhoods in an equitable manner and taking into account different criteria, such as income, number of inhabitants or the surface area of the district. Each district receives between 2 and 3.6 million euros.
Broader and more diverse participation
The objectives of this second edition are to reinforce participation at city level and strengthen it in the districts, to ensure universal and inclusive participation throughout the process and to strengthen the technical response to the projects and also improve their implementation. In the 2020 edition, around two thousand proposals were submitted, of which 72 projects chosen by citizens were finally implemented.
New mechanisms have been established to encourage the participation of groups that often have less say in these processes, such as people with disabilities, children and young people, for whom specific sessions have been organised. This inclusive perspective will allow the final proposals to reflect the needs of all citizens and ensure that the selected projects are also representative of the diverse reality of the city.
All the information about the process and how to participate can be found on the decidim.barcelona platform, where all the steps to take part in this project will be detailed. This platform, developed in free software and used in more than thirty countries, has more than 3.5 million registered participants worldwide, 115,000 of which in Barcelona.
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