The Better Cities Initiative prototypes new pathways, new processes, and new ways to support civic leadership that puts people at the heart of city-making. 

In partnership with the New Democracy Foundation and a local Council, this project deploys a radically new way to listen deeply, eliciting and articulating deep popular wisdom by applying the Citizen Jury process to planning for the first time. 

The Citizen Jury

The citizen jury is deliberative democracy process in which a randomly selected group of people, balanced for community demographics, come together to deliberate, learn and make recommendations on a particular issue or policy question. The process typically involves several days of neutrally facilitated discussions over a number of weeks and in this case will operate in three-stages:

• Stage One: Public Forum Citizen-led design brief

  We hold a two-hour public forum in the electorate or LGA in question. Attendance is free, and everyone – from local politicians and business leaders to professionals and residents is welcome to have a view. Usually, the first hour involves an array of very short speeches from diverse community representatives and the second hour is an open Q&A from the floor. The purpose of the forum is to test public support for stage two, the Citizens’ Assembly on local planning. 

• Stage Two: Citizens’ Assembly 

  The Citizens’ Assembly collects perhaps 30 or 40 randomly selected citizens for a number of (usually six) Saturdays over two or three months, asking them to deliberate on the future of city-making in the area. The process is nourished by a smorgasbord of offerings and presentations from an array of experts - developers and planners, landscape architects and community housing providers, economists and tenants, philosophers and poets – whom the jurors are invited to interrogate in a spirit of openness and active self-education. The sessions are facilitated towards an eventual consensus, framed in an illustrated principles document.

• Stage Three: Citizens’ Charter   

  The Citizens’ Charter is developed from this principles document to create a brief that outlines community expectations, requirements and goals for better density design – more liveable, affordable, sustainable and beautiful neighbourhoods.  This document, once adopted by the Council, will guide all future planning in the area, creating a roadmap for design teams and a faster approval path for developers who work to the community expectations.  

The Prototype
From this citizen-generated design brief, The Better Cities Initiative will collaborate with design teams to imagine and test an array of 3-D solutions, collecting these into a pattern book of mix-and-match neighbourhood design options. After public exhibition, and with these pattern book designs in hand, The Better Cities Initiative will then work with a representative of NSW planning, a local developer, the Citizen Jury and the Council to develop an MOU agreement between all parties in order to create an on-the-ground prototype.