Better Reykjavik is an online platform for the crowdsourcing of solutions to urban challenges launched in May 2010. Better Reykjavik is a co-creation project of the Citizens Foundation, Reykjavik City and its citizens that connects them and improves trust and policy. It’s a platform for crowdsourcing solutions to urban challenges and has multiple democratic functions: Agenda setting, Participatory budgeting and Policymaking. Innovations include unique debating system, crowd-sourcing, submission of multimedia content and extensive use of AI to improve the user experience as well as content submitted. Better Reykjavik is an umbrella for several programs, including the city’s participatory budgeting platform called “My Neighborhood” and the City Council’s participatory lawmaking project is called “Your Voice.” Over 20% of the population of the City regularly uses the platform, which has over 27,000 registered users, primarily for participatory budgeting.
Title
Brief description
Better Reykjavik is an online platform for the crowdsourcing of solutions to urban challenges launched in May 2010.
Better Reykjavik is a co-creation project of the Citizens Foundation, Reykjavik City and its citizens that connects them and improves trust and policy. The platform has multiple democratic functions: Agenda setting, Participatory budgeting and Policymaking. Innovations include a unique debating system, crowd-sourcing, submission of multimedia content and extensive use of AI to improve the user experience as well as content submitted.
Better Reykjavik is an umbrella for several programs, including the city’s participatory budgeting platform called “My Neighborhood” and the City Council’s participatory lawmaking project called “Your Voice.” Over 20% of the population of the City regularly uses the platform, which has over 27,000 registered users, primarily for participatory budgeting.
Keywords
online platform; urban; co-creation; democratic
City/Country
Time period
Ongoing initiative (from June 2010 to now)
Lever(s)
Methodologies
Citizen identify a need for a service in the city. This is posted online on the forum after proper authorization. The idea is posted, discussed and voted online. These projects and the process through which they were conceived give people the power to improve their own lives in the city. Past projects include a programme to support homeless citizens during the winter (approved in 2011), and a proposal to transform the city's main commercial street, the Laugavegur, into a pedestrian-only corridor (approved in 2012)
World Region
Scale(s) of the case analysed
Target audience and dimension
Domain(s) of application
Context addressed
Solution applied
Challenge addressed/ Problem-led
Barriers addressed
Main Practices
Impact
Co benefits
Engagement Journey
Impact to climate neutrality
By bringing citizens into the political realm and giving them a real voice in policy decisions, the platform has not only empowered citizens, but increased transparency and helped to align government action with citizen opinion and priorities.
One of its core principles is crowd-sourcing, which is a process of “collaborative knowledge production” based on the collection of input from the public as opposed to from the experts. It has empowered ordinary citizens to engage in deliberations on important public policies and at the same time greatly reduced the influence of elite interests in politics.
In the current system of BR, citizens have developed policies to improve the quality of their everyday lives involving school field trips, pedestrian parks and homeless shelters; they are largely precluded from taking on greater political and economic matters since those are usually managed by the specialists and experts in contemporary society.
Better Reykjavik could be the best direct source of ensuring climate solutions receive feedback and that that city is moving well towards the 2030 goal.
Context & Public policy of reference
This platform can be a great source for collecting feedback on policies
Innovative approach(es) addressed
This platform empowers citizens to bring their ideas and suggestions forward in making changes in the city, neighbourhood, schools etc. The platform offers every citizen to suggest an idea which will get discussed and then voted upon by other citizens. The final say is with the city authorities regarding the feasibility of the idea. This platform engages all groups from the comfort of their homes and ensures productive use of time instead of citizens spending time on leisure and other activities.
Initiator
The Better Reykjavik platform was built using the Your Priorities web application developed by the non-profit, Iceland-based Citizens Foundation. Using Your Priorities, individuals, groups, and governments can create their own participatory web portals with various sub-forums called 'communities'. Your Priorities was developed as a way to make online citizen participation simpler and more convenient. Unique to the platform is the ability to both propose ideas and deliberate on other proposals. According to developers, the application “allows large groups to speak with one voice and organize ideas.” (Citizens Foundation). By separating points for and against into columns, people are able to see the most popular points of view on the topic.
Stakeholder networks and organisational model
All citizens and all age groups.
Democratic Purpose
Participant Recruitment
Interaction between participants
Resources
Key enablers
- Political: All relevant stakeholders have access and visibility to the ideas
- Economic: Ideas are posted and discussed free of charge
- Social: The platform engages all ages and groups from their homes
- Legal: All citizens given access to post, discuss and vote after authentication
Key inhibiting factors
- Political: The BR policy-making process is essentially non-binding since the final decision rests in the hands of city councillors who decide which proposals get passed and implemented.
Drawbacks/pros/cons of the solutions (after implementation)
The use of the term “Better Reykjavik” to refer to multiple projects has caused confusion among participants. Some have submitted ideas on Your Voice that belong as participatory budgeting projects on My Neighborhood, as citizens often do not understand the rules for participation, much less how the City Council functions.
Some have raised concerns about the limitations of the platform with regard to its original goal. While Better Reykjavik was conceived as a platform to give citizens a voice in governmental and economic matters, participants’ ideas have focused on projects that simply improve the quality of everyday life. This raises questions of whether it is necessary for the Better Reykjavik platform to be further improved to facilitate this larger conversation between citizens and the city’s government.
Google Translate is incorporated to make the website accessible to non-Icelandic speakers, but it is questionable whether this is adequate to ensure participation by non-Icelandic speaking immigrants.
Scalability
The platform is very flexible and has no limiting condition on it at the moment. However, it needs to be properly managed for more engagement.
Key lessons
Main positive lessons/opportunities identified:
- Engagement of all citizens
- All suggestions are welcome - there is no clear budget limit for each individual idea or policy proposal submitted in the Open Consultations forum
- Even if ideas do not get implemented, they are still noted by the authorities
Main failures/barriers identified:
- Final decision rests with the city in terms of funding and feasibility
- Fluctuating participations from residents (6,9% in 2012, 5,7% in 2014, 12,5% in 2018)
Comments ()