Barcelona vs. Bogota: What is the World's Most Democratic City?

When people are asked whether they live in a democracy, they often respond based on the state of their national government, and whether it’s responsive to election outcomes. Perhaps we should answer instead by thinking about the state of democracy in our cities and towns. Local democracy is the level of democracy in which most human beings participate. But we don’t have the same rankings, measures and data to compare cities on democracy that institutions like V-Dem or Freedom House have for our nations.

How do you know if your town or city is a democracy? One way to understand the question is to examine cities that are considered leaders in local democratic practice and innovation. Two instructive urban leaders in democracy are Barcelona, in the Spain’s autonomous Catalonia region, and Bogota, the national capital of Colombia.

In this online event, we’ll bring together two democracy scholar-practitioners in Bogota, two expert-practitioners in Barcelona, and one local democracy expert for a cross-urban exchange and a planetary conversation about how to make our cities more democratic and effective.

The “fearless city” of Barcelona, crowned the first European Capital of Democracy in 2022, has advanced too many democratic innovations to list here. Among them are development of citizens assemblies and participatory budgeting, careful planning and democratic transformation of public spaces and facilities to encourage participation, and the building of an online participation and idea platform called Decidim, which is so robust that it’s being used in dozens of cities around the world.

Meanwhile, Bogota in the 21st century has developed youth democracy, experimented with new ways of public consultations (including the Itinerant Citizens Assembly), and advanced novel strategies for strengthening civil society organizations that advance democratic practice at the community levels. Bogota is a world leader in using data for democracy and innovation, and has drawn international notice for turning a country club into a public park, creating new people-driven systems to relieve women of care burdens, and adopting widely copied innovations that increase access to transportation (from walking school buses to its Transmilenio rapid bus service).

What can we learn from the experiences of Barcelona and Bogota, and the differences between them?

This public webinar was hosted by Berggruen Institute's Renovating Democracy team on April 2, 2024.

ES: https://berggruen.org/news/barcelona-...
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SPEAKERS:

Joe Mathews (Moderator) - Renovating Democracy Fellow, Berggruen Institute; Founder and Editor of DemocracyLocal.com

Indira Latorre Gonzalez - Senior lecturer at the Universidad del Rosario (Colombia) and co-director of the international Democracy R&D network

Marc Serra Solé - President of the Climate Action Area and Deputy for Participation in the Barcelona Provincial Council

Francesca Bria - President, Italian Innovation Fund

Felipe Rey Salamanca - Public law professor at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Colombia; founding partner and project coordinator, iDeemos

Adrià Duarte Griñó - Coordinator, International Observatory on Participatory Democracy

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REFERENCES:

European Capital of Democracy (Barcelona 2023-2024)
- EN: https://capitalofdemocracy.eu/barcelona
- ES: https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/inno...

Itinerant Citizens Assembly
- EN: https://participate.oidp.net/processe...
- ES:    • ¿Qué es la Asamblea Ciudadana Itinera...  

Decidim https://decidim.org/

The Hanse Report by Francesca Bria for New Institute https://thenew.institute/media/pages/...

El Sistema Representativo by Felipe Rey: https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Felipe-Re...

iDeemos: https://ideemos.org/

Children of a Modest Star by Nils Gilman and Jonathan Blake (Berggruen Institute) https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=3...

IOPD/OIPD - International Observatory for Participatory Democracy
EN: https://oidp.net/en/
ES: https://oidp.net/es/index.php

UCLG (united Cities and Local Governments): https://uclg.org/

The Pact for the Future of Humanity: https://www.uclgmeets.org/processes/P...

Against Elections: The Case for Democracy by David van Reybrouck https://www.amazon.com/Against-Electi...