Democratic Cities: rethinking the future of cities and social transformation

The Democratic Cities international meeting reaches its third edition. On this occasion, Ciudades Democráticas is a joint effort of the cities of Madrid and Barcelona to rethink the future of the city from the prism of citizen participation.

Madrid kicks off with Democratic Cities programming on November 23 in Medialab Prado, with six panels that address the future of participation, random democracy, deliberation processes and the phenomenon of fake news, among other issues. For its part, Barcelona closed the Democratic Cities meeting on November 28, with four panels.

Between 23 and 28, both cities deploy under the umbrella of the Democratic Cities, a whole itinerary of events related to democratic participation and innovation: the 2nd edition of CONSULCON (22-24), the 18th conference of the International Observatory of Democracy Participative (26-27) and the 3rd edition of the Metadecidim Annual Conference in Barcelona (28).

Democratic Cities 2018 is a collaborative project co-organized by two entities: ParticipaLab (Medialab-Prado) and The Laboratori d’Innovació Democràtica of Barcelona.

The project

Democratic Cities is an international meeting aimed for exploring the possibilities offered by participatory technologies, digital tools and collective processes that are transforming cities. The 2018 edition will be held in Madrid (23 of November) and Barcelona (28 of November), and will include different round tables to discuss important challenges such as democracy by lot, collective intelligence processes in the information age, urban governance and management of the commons and the future of direct democracy.

Democratic Cities 2018 is part of three weeks a of reflection and experimentation in different cities on collective intelligence, participatory democracy and technopolitics. The conference will be preceded by the workshop on Collective Intelligence for Democracy  and, between the 22rd and 28th of November, will be held in Madrid the 2nd edition of CONSULCON, the 18th conference of the International Observatory of Participatory Democracy and the 3rd edition of the Metadecidim Annual Conference in Barcelona to be held on November 23.

Where do we come from?

Democratic Cities 2018 is the third edition of this annual conference. The first edition in 2016 was a joint effort between Madrid City Council, Barcelona City Council and the European project D-CENT to organise a Democracy Lab at Medialab-Prado and the international conference at the Reina Sofía Museum. In the Democracy Lab workshops, hackatons and open sessions were held to think, design and develop tools, processes and strategies for democratic participation served to articulate the network of common for democracy Democomunes. The international conference generated a first debate around networked democracy, new forms of participation and digital commons in cities. The second edition in 2017 brought together experts and citizens interested in democratic innovation to debate, think and create new prototypes for the 21st century democracy and a new free and global operating system of participation.

Here you have the links of the streamed activities, both of ConsulCon and Democratic Cities.

Thursday afternoon, from 15h to 17h, ConsulCon18 first session: https://youtu.be/aAERfXY3kzY

Friday morning, from 09.50 to 14h,  Democratic Cities: https://youtu.be/j0vt4s7zKAg

Friday afternoon, from 15.50 to 19.00h. ConsulCon18: https://youtu.be/A-J5tBc-ehU

Saturday  morning, from 10.00 to 14.00h. ConsulCon18: https://youtu.be/4OFAopwE6vs

Saturday afternoon, from 15.30 to 19.00h. ConsulCon18:  https://youtu.be/QbCwZW3Cboc

More information and registration: https://democratic-cities.cc/