7.2 When to codesign solutions with the public?

In short, implement a codesign process if you are concerned about maintaining trust with residents. The following is a brief list of situations where taking the time to meet with residents to discuss or codesign a solution can help build trust in the path you ultimately choose.

The solution is not obvious or immediately clear.

This may be the case for an especially intractable or multifaceted issue, such as traffic, crime or employment. There are multiple avenues to managing or resolving this issue, and resources are limited. Through dialogue and codesign processes, residents can help you decide where to start.

The ideal solution is infeasible, and an incremental approach is needed.

Even large municipalities need help funding large infrastructure projects such as access to drinking water, electrification or waste management. Residents will usually understand these constraints and, through dialogue, can help local officials develop a phased approach to tackle these projects over the long term.

There is a risk of bias, disproportionate impact and exclusion of groups from the solution.

One characteristic of wicked problems is that efforts to manage them will have unexpected consequences. In other words, it’s possible that your solution will create new problems. Use dialogue to reach out to the people you expect will be affected by a solution, such as new development, increasing or reducing funding for projects, or other changes. By bringing their perspectives into the dialogue, these individuals (regular residents or engaged activists) can help your team anticipate and mitigate risks. They can also offer alternative solutions, work with local authorities to monitor implementation and raise alarms about unforeseen problems as they arise.

Residents have no other means to hear about, offer input on or affect this decision.

Before beginning certain projects, many local authorities must engage the public through a period of public consultation, hearings and input. For example, in Annapolis, MD, new construction or renovation on a building in the city’s historic district must first undergo a period of public consultation or review, where officials scrutinize architectural plans and residents can register their feedback, concerns or complaints about the development effort. In instances where such a process is generally perfunctory, biased against certain interests, closed to the public or nonexistent, the local authority can use dialogue and codesign methods to engage these concerns before breaking ground on new efforts. This can help to preempt complaints and backlash later when funds are expended, and it may be too late to start over.

Box 26. Learn from experience – Deciding on codesign in Vráble, Slovakia, and Vișniovca and Găvănoasa, Moldova

In Vráble, Slovakia, one issue that emerged as the second priority for residents was a lack of parking near the town’s polyclinic, or general hospital. The solution to this issue is straightforward – the municipality will try to expand available parking near this building. To that end, local officials discussed redesigning the current plot of land and acquiring additional land nearby. The core team had recently run an election campaign where this issue had been a part of their platform. Further, there is an existing process for public feedback on construction and development projects. Officials felt confident moving forward with their efforts to increase the availability of parking near this site without an additional, separate dialogue process.

In this instance, further dialogue with the public to codesign a solution could be helpful to find out how much parking is needed, how close to the building the space needs to be and how people in the local neighborhood would react to more parking space. However, municipal officials decided another survey or formal process for this dialogue was unnecessary. The issue is long-standing and clear, and the team felt it could rely on its existing outreach and regular community town hall meetings to field additional concerns.

In Vișniovca, Moldova, however, a door-to-door questionnaire process led by the mayor and her team in 2015 indicated that residents’ top priorities were fixing poor-quality roads and addressing a lack of street lighting. Both issues made driving, walking and biking hazardous, especially at night or during bad weather. The mayor agreed to address these issues, but she and her team quickly realized that they needed more funds than their budget could afford. To address the issues, she and her team returned to the public with additional questions to determine which roads to pave first and whether residents would be willing to donate their own money to help address these issues. Within a few years, the municipality had been able to pave 60 percent of the local roads and add street lighting in 50 percent of the community. Similarly, after a survey revealed residents wanted a formal waste collection service, the mayor of Găvănoasa returned to the public with another survey to determine how many residents would use the service, identify how much they would be willing to pay for it and organize volunteers to clean up the informal landfills currently blighting local neighborhoods. Responses to this survey served as the basis for a new municipal waste management service, co-funded by the municipality and residents.