Ever since the turn of the millennium, countries all over Europe are increasingly witnessing situations in which citizens are demanding a more direct form of democracy, ranging from a cry for more information, to being involved in actual decision-making procedures, and even to get the autonomy to (partly) self-organize. At the same time, governments of these countries are increasingly putting citizen participation at the centre of their policy objectives, striving for more transparency, the coproduction of public projects, and even the empowerment of local people and communities to self-organize and take up part of the decision power (e.g. the idea of the ‘Big Society’ in the UK and the ‘Participation Society’ in the Netherlands). In short, there is a loud and clear call for civic self-organisation.

Design, social media and technology have been put forward as a way to operationalize this multitude. Design refers here both to the analogue and the virtual, the temporary and the permanent and can range from the scale of objects to cities. Social media refers to digital applications supporting posting, sharing, commenting, rating, etc. And technology refers to hardware such as urban screens, smart tags, georeferenced sensors. The objective of this conference is to discuss three issues related to the implementation of this multitude.

All papers will double-blind peer-reviewed and accepted papers will be published in an online conference proceedings. A selection of papers will be published in an edited volume via the inPlanning platform (http://www.inplanning.eu)

Official website