• Listen to this segment

GUEST: Josh Lerner, PhD student at the New School for Social Research, he has been researching and organizing around participatory budgeting in Canada, Argentina and the United States since 2003. He facilitates an international participatory budgeting network and is currently working on the New York Participatory Budgeting Initiative.

Originating in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, the concept of participatory budgeting has been adopted by an increasing number of cities worldwide. Most recently, residents of two Canadian cities have used participatory budgeting to decide public housing and city budgets. It’s a simple concept, involving residents directly in decision making that affects them rather than leaving it up to elected representatives. In Britain, it has received recognition from the UK Department for International Development (DFID), as well as international bodies like the World Bank, the UN, UNESCO and others for its transparency and effectiveness, and is widely used as a model of good practise in local governance. I spoke recently with Josh Lerner, an advocate of participatory budgeting, while he was in Venezuela doing research.

Read Josh Lerner’s article on Participatory Budgeting in Canada.