Senior Researcher, University of Coimbra
Graduated in Architecture and PhD in Urban, Territorial and Environmental Planning for the University of Florence (Italy), Giovanni is a senior researcher at the Centre for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra, being part of the Working Group on Democracy, Citizenship and Law. Qualified in 2014 as an associate professor in Italy, he has been teaching Urban Management and Analysis of Territories and Settlements at the University of Florence. Currently, he is co-coordinator of the PhD "Democracy in the 21st century" at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra. His main areas of research include citizen participation in the management of budgeting and territorial management, topics on which he has numerous publications in several languages. He also works on themes such as informal city and self-production of habitat, the right to the city, practices of 'insurgent citizenship' and cities' networks on the international stage.
The aim of the session is to introduce an innovative method for digital policy-making: crowdsourcing. Learn how it works in theory and which are the digital tools to put it into practice. The method puts citizens at the centre and is based on the principle that the crowd is power and that digital tools remarkably increase that power. First, the visionary view on democracy innovations is given and the concept of crowdsourcing is introduced. The presentation and examples show how the collective wisdom of a crowd could be used by governments facing all sorts of challenges – from the Green Deal to Covid or War. Second, the keynote is followed by a short introduction of an ongoing crowdsourcing initiative on air quality in Tallinn (and some other European cities), and what are the main challenges in putting theory into practice. There is also a room for questions from the audience, reflections and discussions in the session.
The aim of the session is to introduce an innovative method for digital policy-making: crowdsourcing. Learn how it works in theory and which are the digital tools to put it into practice. The method puts citizens at the centre and is based on the principle that the crowd is power and that digital tools remarkably increase that power. First, the visionary view on democracy innovations is given and the concept of crowdsourcing is introduced. The presentation and examples show how the collective wisdom of a crowd could be used by governments facing all sorts of challenges – from the Green Deal to Covid or War. Second, the keynote is followed by a short introduction of an ongoing crowdsourcing initiative on air quality in Tallinn (and some other European cities), and what are the main challenges in putting theory into practice. There is also a room for questions from the audience, reflections and discussions in the session.
