Government
When Citizens Make a Budget, Can They Look Beyond Their Own Neighborhoods?
That's the question in Vallejo, the first American municipality to approve citywide participatory budgeting.
In this week's The Big Fix, contributor David Lepeska explored the process of participatory budgeting. Across the country, a handful of districts have let residents decide how to spend some part of their city's discretionary budget. In New York, this has led to new parks and composting areas; in Chicago, a committee funded a collection of murals.
These projects are often a boon to the neighborhoods where they're based. But how do you create projects that would appeal to a larger slice of a city?