Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Chapter 1: Introduction: Real Money, Real Power?.- Chapter 2: Participatory Budgeting from the Past to the Present.- Chapter 3: The Challenges of Neighborhood Assemblies.- Chapter 4: The Challenges of Delegate Meetings.- Chapter 5: The Challenges of Project Expos and Pop-Up Voting.- Chapter 6: Conclusion: Doing Participatory Budgeting Right.
Synopsis
Offers an investigative, behind-the-scenes look at New York City's participatory budgeting (PB) process, which takes readers through an entire annual cycle
Provides a clear account of issues related primarily to transparency, manipulation, and favoritism that are not commonly acknowledged in the PB literature
Provides a critical review of the experience of the asserted beneficiaries of participatory budgeting and reveals a variety of barriers to actually achieving those benefits
Recommends substantial reform, specifically as it pertains to a lack of transparency, manipulation by city agencies, favorable treatment of insider proposed projects, and a failure to reveal the basis of project costs