2023 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"

17th Edition

Phase 6 of 7

Publication Preparation 18/09/2023 - 06/11/2023

Process phases

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Zapopan: Building community with the participatory budget

Official proposal

07/06/2023 10:29

The Participatory Budget in Zapopan was born in 2016, however, over the years it has evolved to become a good practice, which led our municipality to obtain the Mayors of Mexico Award in 2022.

In this sense, in August 2022, a solemn session of the Municipal Assembly, the highest body for citizen participation in Zapopan, was held, in which it was approved that for the first time in the Participatory Budget priority be given to works that would promote the strengthening of the social fabric. and contribute to the construction of the community, since historically people had mainly selected road improvement works.

The objective of this modification is to build community with the Participatory Budget, contributing to the strengthening of the social fabric in a democratic way through proposals for work with universal accessibility, elaborated and selected by the citizens, which promote the recovery of public space, the rehabilitation of green areas, the improvement or construction of recreational infrastructure and sustainable development actions for culture, sports and healthy coexistence, with a focus on care.

This change focuses on community building, with a specific focus on creating better environments for the development of coexistence and the strengthening of ties between people, fostering a sense of appropriation and belonging to projects among neighbors, since they are generated by them, from their environments.

The decision to give this new approach to the Participatory Budget was taken jointly between neighbors and authorities in terms of governance, understood as the way of governing in which the direct participation of citizens in public decisions is encouraged, co-creating solutions to the problems of the municipality.

Since the change of orientation of the works of the Participatory Budget was announced, an effort was made to include the different groups and diverse sectors in the phase of zone forums, in which the works that will represent them are selected; To this end, representatives of the Human Rights area of the municipality were invited, who sensitized citizens about the importance of including universal accessibility and the perspective of care in their projects.

Although the real impacts of the innovation "Building community with the participatory budget" are not yet measurable, the following data for the 2023 financial year can be listed:

A new record of citizen participation was achieved in this mechanism, reaching 96,224 voters, who cast 256,863 ballots.
The average age of the participants was 49.7 years.
During January there was a high participation of older adults.
The winning projects in the first place are related to parks.
Since 2016, 471,228 people have voted in the Zapopan Participatory Budget.

In addition to these data, it is important to mention that a direct impact is expected on the improvement of the social fabric in Zapopan, caused by the public works that will be financed with the 2023 Participatory Budget.

There is no specific website for the experience, however the one for participating works in 2023 is presented: https://portal.zapopan.gob.mx/aquitudecides/index.html

Participatory Budget in Zapopan: https://presupuestoparticipativo.zapopan.gob.mx/

Institution website: https://www.zapopan.gob.mx/