Participatory City - A Review
Participation in practical everyday activities transforms people lives and the neighborhoods in which they live. Participatory city will be working in neighborhoods to achieve the necessary scale , creating strong support systems that encourage people to test ideas and grow new projects.
People in today ‘s generation forget their happiness in themselves . Beyond technology, the sharing of knowledge could be achieved through communal meals , involving neighbor activities , sharing their experience with others , etc. could bring them happy and it also motivates the people around them to help others . Research says only 3% of people in UK is involved in neighborhood activities and 60% people are willing to work together to improve their neighborhood.
Example - The Great Cook Project
The Great Cook Project is a project where people come together to batch cook meals , and take home portions for the week . Anyone can offer to share a recipe they enjoy making at home , and just multiple the ingredients to create a large batch. People join in by registering to bring one of the ingredients needed for that dish. This is the place where collaboration is done.
Why Collective Action?
Exactly , this will give the collective benefits of many participation projects like people will get the ability to work with different background , communicate and respond to many social problems , capacity for collective decision as a community , trust in neighbors etc. This doesn’t end up here instead it will give direct immediate benefits to individuals and families like growing ideas, creating new livelihoods, learning, economic sustainability. As we know Everything we do starts from our home . The access of network that we will start from our family. People can build an emergency of network effect to know more about people in different projects . If they collaborate with each other, everyone will gain the knowledge in different field. Sometimes it may give a solution to a social problem.
Example - Civic participation relates to lower crime rates, Neighbours working together reduces unemployment .
What Next?
We have discussed what is the problem and why it has occurred . Now it’s time to think about the solution . Create more Support platforms , more projects , more opportunities, more participation , more direct benefits to individuals, families and to the neighborhood area as a whole. By doing this many people will get more creativity and unemployment will be reduced. Tackling big problem could be done easily if we volunteered ourselves and communicate with everyone in collaborative manner. This will give the chance to mingle among everyone and help other to overcome their social and economic problems.
Are you interested by reading this? Get the book here
By,
Uma Sekar (Jerusalem College of Engineering)
Chennai GLUG, FSFTN