Participatory Decision-Making: Experimental Methods
What you'll learn
- Arrive to an understanding of deliberative democracy and participation
- Get an overview of innovative deliberative democracy and participatory practices in Europe
- Understand the different dimensions of deliberative instruments/tools (e.g. administrative level, level of participation, transferability, etc.)
- Understand the contemporary challenges of participation in Europe
Requirements
- No prior experience is needed. Working in urbanism or related fields is an advantage.
Description
This course is designed for anyone interested in making decision-making more inclusive, transparent, and citizen-driven. Whether you’re an urban professional, community leader, activist, or engaged citizen, you’ll gain practical tools and strategies to empower people, build engagement, and create fairer participatory processes.
Led by Eutropian experts - Lukács Hayes, Daniela Patti, Levente Polyák, and Giovanni Pagano - the course explores both theory and real-world applications of participatory democracy. It tackles key challenges like engaging marginalized groups, ensuring diverse citizen representation, and sharing decision-making power effectively.
You'll learn about practical participation methods such as sortition, which ensures fair representation through random selection, and co-design approaches that foster collaborative citizen decision-making. The course also covers targeted outreach strategies to include underrepresented voices in governance and planning.
Case studies from initiatives like the Vienna Youth Strategy, the UK Climate Assembly, and Brussels Mixed Parliamentary Committees illustrate successful ways to integrate citizens’ voices into policymaking.
Additionally, participants will gain access to the Toolbox of Experimental Participatory Methods, a resource designed to help individuals and organizations build inclusive, impactful citizen decision-making processes.
By combining expert insights with real-world examples, this course empowers everyone - from professionals to grassroots organizers - to drive positive change through meaningful citizen participation and engagement.
Who this course is for:
- Urban professional, academics, students, local administrators or consultants working (or planning to work) in the field of citizen participation.
Instructor
- 4.9 Instructor Rating
- 3 Reviews
- 4 Students
- 1 Course
Eutropian is a planning, policy and research organisation helping urban regeneration processes. We work with municipalities, NGOs, community groups and EU institutions in participatory planning, policy development as well as in fundraising, cooperations and communication. We are specialised in urban regeneration, cultural development, community participation, local economic development and social innovation, with a special focus on building development scenarios on existing resources. Eutropian offers international know-how for inclusive and sustainable urban regeneration projects. Thanks to its multi-disciplinary approach, Eutropian connects various stakeholders around urban planning and regenerations issues, supporting local development through sustainable economic, environmental and social models. Eutropian consists of two legal entities: Eutropian GmbH is a Vienna-based company offering advisory services to municipalities and international organizations, in policy development, project management, participatory planning, cooperation design, fundraising and communication. Associazione Eutropian is a Rome-based non-profit organization, with a focus on conducting research and organizing participatory processes, professional workshops as well as public events. In the past years, Eutropian has been initiating various international projects including Temporary Use as a Tool for urban Development, Mercato al centro and Funding the Cooperative City.