“My neighborhood. Serabranka” project is a participatory urban development website (PUDW) that involves citizens of Serabranka neighborhood (the city of Minsk) into designing and direct transformation of urban space in the chosen district.
PUDW is an instrument for transparent and efficient two-way communication between urban development professionals and everyday users of public spaces. It helps to transform existing public spaces (urban environment) with citizens’ participation.
PUDW is designed as a multifunctional tool that will allow citizens to:
- directly participate in the development their neighborhood;
- indicate their needs and desires how to use urban space, and see other’s needs and desires on its usage. The project helps people understand that all residents have equal rights to use urban space, disregard of their gender, age and mobility capacity;
- learn about and comment on ideas and proposals of neighborhood`s transformation;
- co-finance the neighborhood development projects, and other.
PUDW has enhanced civic responsibility and become a showcase for citizens’ participation in improving their neighborhood.
The platform also helped to improve local authorities’ attitude towards participative approach, by demonstrating how PUDW can be used for efficient and transparent urban transformations. Local officials saw citizens’ demand on high-quality public space, specific ideas and proposals on changing parking spaces, and were able to actions to solve these issues.
Functionality and content of the PUWD platform changes depending on the project stages: research stage, demonstration of architectural projects, commenting & discussion, voting and crowd-funding.
Mobile application for carrying out initial research on parking demand and parking space turnover is a separate but integral part of the PUDW platform project.
Interested in implementing a similar project in your home town? Contact the Serabranka team to get the website code and the first hand advice!
The platform was deactivated due to the current situation in the country.