New challenges in the improvement of the citizen participation processes of the urban management. Social innovation challenges

Abstract

Cities face a great number of challenges nowadays, in order to guarantee their appeal and quality of life of their citizens. It’s therefore fundamental to improve decision making processes, incorporating public opinion to them. Thus, citizen participation is a tool that clearly improves local governance and the decision-making process, as it allows policy makers to know first-hand their needs, demands and ideas. Nevertheless, the advantages of consulting the public on crucial issues are counterbalanced by many difficulties in managing the participation processes. Mainly due to the fact that participants in these processes, are not often aware of the economic, social and environmental implications of their decisions. The incorporation of new technologies in the decision-making process, can clearly help to overcome these difficulties. A software can display in real time the effect of the changes to the public space, under different variables and quality of life indexes. This research, through the incorporation of a software that helps in the space decision making to various group dynamics, analyses the usage of public participation and its effect.