INTERACTIVE MAP The Conference is intended to be an opportunity for meeting, thinking and debating. It provides us with the chance to go deeper into key issues which are detected, promoted and enhanced in the day-to-day work done in our cities.
This year the Conference is focussing on Participatory Strategic Planning for the democratic construction of cities.
The Objectives set for Conference participants are classified into General Objectives – ones that cut across the activities to be carried out during the course of the Conference - and Specific Objectives.
These Objectives are ambitious and the subject matter is complex. The Conference will not be enough on its own to tackle everything we hope to deal with, but it will enable and foster collective thought and debate.
In order to pursue these Objectives, take advantage of the participants’ knowledge and provide a full and participatory Conference, separate work sessions will be organised for three Main Themes in which the Objectives will be developed.
This year the Conference is focussing on Participatory Strategic Planning for the democratic construction of cities.
The Objectives set for Conference participants are classified into General Objectives – ones that cut across the activities to be carried out during the course of the Conference - and Specific Objectives.
These Objectives are ambitious and the subject matter is complex. The Conference will not be enough on its own to tackle everything we hope to deal with, but it will enable and foster collective thought and debate.
In order to pursue these Objectives, take advantage of the participants’ knowledge and provide a full and participatory Conference, separate work sessions will be organised for three Main Themes in which the Objectives will be developed.
General Objectives
- To expand the discussion about participatory strategic planning practice in local management by studying the diagnostic and participatory planning instruments currently used to detect progress and the obstacles that this progress faces.
- To discuss the extension of critical conscience and social control as strategies for local government in building more democratic societies based on the collective construction of public affairs.
- To encourage the exchange of experiences between members of the International Observatory for Participatory Democracy.
Specific Objecties
- To have a more in-depth discussion of the practices which enable greater transparency to be achieved in the planning and implementation of local public budgets and detecting the challenges related to this task.
- To analyse the participatory experiences of diagnosis and planning of cities as a means of appropriation of the city by its inhabitants.
- To discuss the challenges posed by diversity stimulated by participatory planning practices that involve specific social segments that have historically faced discrimination.
- To find out about and discuss progress in the treatment and spreading of knowledge about the city so as to assess citizen decision-making in a city’s participatory processes.
- To debate methodologies for monitoring the outcomes and commitments agreed upon in the processes.
- To debate methodologies for the sensitisation and evaluation of public and technical municipal managers and for the articulation and training of civil society so as to enhance political participation and improve impact on social control.
- To evaluate the various bodies of knowledge and the educational aspect of participatory planning.
- To ensure in all debates about the formulation of policies and actions that they link participatory planning with the UN’s Millennium Objectives.
Main Themes
The keynote speakers and the working groups will be guided by the three Main Themes they aim to encourage:
The keynote speakers and the working groups will be guided by the three Main Themes they aim to encourage:
- Debate and thinking about the implementation of Participatory Instruments to map out the Planning of local budgets, the master plan for each city, sector plans, etc., fostering the collective construction of our cities guided by the democratic paradigm and the real exercise of social control of public activities.
- Thinking about the needs of the Education and Training processes for the exercise of full citizenship, in which citizens also have knowledge of governance techniques and the information required for decision-making and which principally provide them with autonomy when it comes to participating. We shall also focus the debate on the need to train municipal government players so that they can build the new dynamics that come out of participation into their day-to-day work.
- Discussion about the need to recognise the multiple visions which coexist in our cities, not all of which are in fact recognised as a constituent part of cities. Our goal is to discuss Social Inclusion and Coexistence in Cities, basing our analysis on the diversity of people, wishes, needs and histories. Crosscutting features of this diversity are situations and processes of exclusion, which hinder people’s access to public spaces, thus preventing the exercise of full citizenship.