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Authors:
Noémie Lago
Marianne Durieux
Jean-Alexandre Pouleur
Chantal Scoubeau
Catherine Elsen
Clémentine Schelings
Keywords: citizen participation; digital platform; data processing; Smart City; Belgium
Abstract:
This paper focuses on digital platforms supporting citizen participation in the era of Smart Cities. Our study presents and analyses two examples of online participation platforms, implemented by two Walloon cities: Mons and Liège (Belgium). These two cases highlight the differences and the similarities between both cities’ interpretation of digital participation, as well as the difficulties they faced, especially considering the data processing by city officials. In light of the challenges observed through those two cases, we suggest that digital platforms might potentially be misused, and somehow bias the whole digital participatory process. We therefore issue recommendations about how to design, launch and manage such platforms and, moreover, suggest that platforms should be supplemented by other digital or traditional participatory processes in order to reach higher levels of participation.
Pages: 19 to 25
Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2019
Publication date: July 28, 2019
Published in: conference
ISSN: 2308-3727
ISBN: 978-1-61208-730-6
Location: Nice, France
Dates: from July 28, 2019 to August 2, 2019