Projects and Research

New approaches to democracy where Evoke fellows have played either a lead or supporting role.

Community Governance: A Place-Based Approach
The team at Evoke BC is currently researching and highlighting neighbourhood, or community-based, approaches to governance. Specifically, structures and decision-making practices that are grounded in place. This is a new approach with a long history: Imagine making decisions about your neighbourhood in a local assembly comprised of your neighbours, local businesses, and community organizations.

This approach is showing up in different jurisdictions, such as:

Empowerment Congress - Neighbourhood Councils - in Los Angeles
The Front Porch project in Seattle
Office of Community and Civic Life in Portland (formerly Office of Neighbourhood Involvement)
Neighbourhood Plus program and City Plan in the City of Dallas
Neighbourhood Enhancement Teams in Tacoma

There's also a group of people in Vancouver who are looking to launch a pilot of this model in Vancouver's Inner City, known as Our Place.

Our Place is a place-based collective impact collaboration of residents, community-based organizations, and service providers anchored through the Ray-Cam Community Association. Principles and strategies of this approach include people-centred, participatory service delivery that engages the community, and builds the capacity within communities to collectively identify, analyze, and implement community programs and services. To learn more:

Previous Research:

This paper focuses on a key dimension related to Community Amenity Contributions (CACs); although they are derived from value created within a neighbourhood or community, there is a disconnect from that value generated, the benefits that a community will receive, and how that is decided. Evoke BC believes that a more participatory budgeting process, as a form of participatory democracy, is vital towards making a more equitable democracy, and could be applied in the case of CACs.

Comments

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Why independence matters for a democracy...and what the heck is an ombudsperson?!?

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