In recent years, many countries all over Europe have witnessed a demand for a more direct form of democracy, ranging from improved clarity of information to being directly involved in decision-making procedures. Increasingly, governments are putting citizen participation at the centre of their policy objectives, striving for more transparency, to engage and empower local individuals and communities to collaborate on public projects and to encourage self-organization. This book explores the role of participatory design in keeping these participatory processes public. It addresses four specific lines of enquiry: how can the use and/or development of technologies and social media help to diversify, to coproduce, to interrupt and to document democratic design experiments? Aimed at researchers and academics in the fields of urban planning and participatory design, this book includes contributions from a range of experts across Europe including the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Denmark, Austria, Spain, France, Romania, Hungary and Finland.

In recent years, many countries all over Europe have witnessed a demand for a more direct form of democracy, ranging from improved clarity of information to being directly involved in decision-making procedures. Increasingly, governments are putting citizen participation at the centre of their policy objectives, striving for more transparency, to engage and empower local individuals and communities to collaborate on public projects and to encourage self-organization. This book explores the role of participatory design in keeping these participatory processes public. It addresses four specific lines of enquiry: how can the use and/or development of technologies and social media help to diversify, to coproduce, to interrupt and to document democratic design experiments? Aimed at researchers and academics in the fields of urban planning and participatory design, this book includes contributions from a range of experts across Europe including the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Denmark, Austria, Spain, France, Romania, Hungary and Finland.

Equated with notions of public interaction, the term "participation" is often used very loosely, especially within the contexts of new media and innovation research. Among a recent generation of artists and designers working in new media, there is an increasing need to work across disciplines and domains in ways that enable end users to contribute content, form and structure. These artists are currently developing new parameters in creative collaboration and participation in order to meet the specific working methods and processes required by new media. "Participation Is Risky" illustrates how interesting participative practices and results are typically characterized by the "risky" confrontation between the differences of disciplines and perspectives. While their work will have no fixed form, "Participation Is Risky" proposes that artists who engage in participative practices must take the risk of abandoning their traditional roles and evolve through participatory collaboration.