Reasons To Be Cheerful · 31 days ago

Anyone in Paris Can Decide How the City Spends Its Money

Paris has handed over the pen that writes the city's budget to its own people-including children as young as eight-transforming democracy from a distant ritual into something you can touch on a street corner. Since 2014, residents have proposed over 21,000 ideas and voted 1,345 of them into existence: rooftop farms, baggage storage for the homeless, a cargo bike for a community center's cafe that had "fallen into disrepair." What began in 1980s Brazil as a weapon against corruption has become, in over 160 countries, an antidote to democratic apathy-raising public trust from 55 to 70 percent in just four years by asking a radical question: What if the people who live in a place actually know what it needs? Yet even this experiment carries its tensions: critics note that Paris still reserves its biggest decisions for officials, and "there is voting but not much debate," leaving open the question of whether participation without deliberation is democracy or merely its shadow.