As an urbanist I've been working with urban environments for 7 years, both in big and small companies and the last couple of years I've been focused on citizen engagement. So focused that I even came up with my own platform for participative design and budgeting. We have worked in 17 cities and collected more than 2000 ideas for city development, but we constantly faced the same several major problems that face all architects, developers, municipalities and everyone working with citizen engagement.

**

🤷‍♀️So far citizens are usually not that active in discussion. It is a headache to gather a good amount of them, especially when you need to have a representation of different stakeholders. Though we are almost all on the Internet, we are sometimes a bit scattered and hard to find - not everyone actually has social network pages. And when citizens are finally found they ask the same question - why should I leave my ideas? Who's gonna listen to me and realize them? Where is the budget? And so on… And these are the right questions - many projects and ideas don't get realized because there is not enough support, resources and budget. The city or even business don't have resources to cover all needs. Out of all collected ideas only 2% is usually realized if things go the right way. And everything is very dependent on governmental bodies. Some programs can even be not taken into account because they simply don't fit into the goals and interests of the authorities . And this all when people are asked. But usually even that doesn't happen.

**

💻🌳But urban design and urban planning actually resembles very much the UX design. You craft out the space for its users. You cannot shape a good neighborhood or a good city if you don't know what people need, like, hate, already use…etc. Citizens might not have professional knowledge in urban planning but they have their everyday life experience as well as their own background and a right to decide how the city should be developed.

**

It's time to listen to the citizens.

⌚It's time to give rights to those who use the space. Before blockchain technology there was no ability to implement really fair voting, and before DAOs there was no ability to run a truly fairly structured organization. Now we can create a structure that will totally change how we develop our cities - we can let citizens be a horizontally organized community of like-minded passionate and dedicated people, who can themselves decide where the district or city budget should go and vote for city changes knowing that voting is fair and that budget belongs to the community.

**

It's time for UX-city design.

🌍And modern technology should serve to solve this many urban problems. Vitalik Buterin has already talked a lot about how blockchain might change the way cities' budgets work and the CityDAO initiative has started to shape an idea of a blockchain city. We think that urban questions should be met at first though not from the big city scale but rather as a structure where the starting point might be a district or a small community or a system of them. And later on many more people will be engaged in the process.

**

🌳🚲🏡Join us if you feel that you are worried about your future, about your surroundings. If you are ready to accept the challenge and be the one to really change the space around you. Join us if you feel that your courtyard, your district, your city is more than just a space - it is your home, where your kids will grow and play around, meet new people, be educated, find their way in this life. How we feel physically and mentally strongly depends on the urban environment around us - so let’s shape it ourselves.

Let us be a strong community of people who are ready to develop their city the right way.

👉And the right way is the one which is accepted by the community, which is impactful, sustainable and oriented for the future.

**

If you feel that you want to become part of such a community, make decisions and take real actions and live in a new strong city - please join and support us. And let’s move to a more sustainable future together.

👋Our Twitter and our Discord would be the places for communication.

Stay tuned. Soon we are going to tell you more about next steps and the way to bring our ideas to reality together. 😎🌳

As an urbanist I've been working with urban environments for 7 years, both in big and small companies and the last couple of years I've been focused on citizen engagement. So focused that I even came up with my own platform for participative design and budgeting. We have worked in 17 cities and collected more than 2000 ideas for city development, but we constantly faced the same several major problems that face all architects, developers, municipalities and everyone working with citizen engagement.

**

🤷‍♀️So far citizens are usually not that active in discussion. It is a headache to gather a good amount of them, especially when you need to have a representation of different stakeholders. Though we are almost all on the Internet, we are sometimes a bit scattered and hard to find - not everyone actually has social network pages. And when citizens are finally found they ask the same question - why should I leave my ideas? Who's gonna listen to me and realize them? Where is the budget? And so on… And these are the right questions - many projects and ideas don't get realized because there is not enough support, resources and budget. The city or even business don't have resources to cover all needs. Out of all collected ideas only 2% is usually realized if things go the right way. And everything is very dependent on governmental bodies. Some programs can even be not taken into account because they simply don't fit into the goals and interests of the authorities . And this all when people are asked. But usually even that doesn't happen.

**

💻🌳But urban design and urban planning actually resembles very much the UX design. You craft out the space for its users. You cannot shape a good neighborhood or a good city if you don't know what people need, like, hate, already use…etc. Citizens might not have professional knowledge in urban planning but they have their everyday life experience as well as their own background and a right to decide how the city should be developed.

**

It's time to listen to the citizens.

⌚It's time to give rights to those who use the space. Before blockchain technology there was no ability to implement really fair voting, and before DAOs there was no ability to run a truly fairly structured organization. Now we can create a structure that will totally change how we develop our cities - we can let citizens be a horizontally organized community of like-minded passionate and dedicated people, who can themselves decide where the district or city budget should go and vote for city changes knowing that voting is fair and that budget belongs to the community.

**

It's time for UX-city design.

🌍And modern technology should serve to solve this many urban problems. Vitalik Buterin has already talked a lot about how blockchain might change the way cities' budgets work and the CityDAO initiative has started to shape an idea of a blockchain city. We think that urban questions should be met at first though not from the big city scale but rather as a structure where the starting point might be a district or a small community or a system of them. And later on many more people will be engaged in the process.

**

🌳🚲🏡Join us if you feel that you are worried about your future, about your surroundings. If you are ready to accept the challenge and be the one to really change the space around you. Join us if you feel that your courtyard, your district, your city is more than just a space - it is your home, where your kids will grow and play around, meet new people, be educated, find their way in this life. How we feel physically and mentally strongly depends on the urban environment around us - so let’s shape it ourselves.

Let us be a strong community of people who are ready to develop their city the right way.

👉And the right way is the one which is accepted by the community, which is impactful, sustainable and oriented for the future.

**

If you feel that you want to become part of such a community, make decisions and take real actions and live in a new strong city - please join and support us. And let’s move to a more sustainable future together.

👋Our Twitter and our Discord would be the places for communication.

Stay tuned. Soon we are going to tell you more about next steps and the way to bring our ideas to reality together. 😎🌳