In Episode 9, the final episode of the season, we take a step back. With our two guests, we look at the bigger picture: could participatory programs help address the crisis of democracy?

Our two experts come from very different fields.

Mitch Stripling works at the intersection of philosophy and disaster management and is the Director of the NYC Preparedness and Recovery Institute.

Carl Henrik Knutsen is a professor of political science and economics at the University of Oslo and an investigator at the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project.

While we agree that democracies are in crisis today, we also discuss how crises can become catalysts for positive change.

Professor Stripling shares an encouraging story about the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, when a disaster became an opportunity for systemic transformation.

A key precondition is that those who have benefited from the system come to see what those less well off have long known: that the system is failing.

In those moments, there is a window to build something better, not by restoring what was not working, but by reimagining the entire system. In Mexico, after the earthquake, this led to the creation of labor unions for garment workers.

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We’re living through a global democratic crisis, and elections around the world are sending a clear message: the system isn’t working.

It Takes a City is a podcast about participation and democracy, hosted by Stefania Kapronczay, a human rights advocate working on resilient democracies from Budapest, Hungary, and Flavio Proietti Pantosti, a social innovator and entrepreneur focused on public administration from Rome, Italy.

Through conversations with practitioners, we explore lesser-known stories of participation, often from communities with limited resources. Each episode unpacks real tactics, strategic dilemmas, and honest failures, with the goal of offering practical insights.

Visit https://takesacity.com/ or get in touch at ⁠⁠ittakesacity@gmail.com⁠⁠.

Episode 8 takes us to Mexico.

We look at what it really takes to make participatory programs work in practice, and ask whether their success is less about design and more about discipline.

Dino Cantú-Pedraza, Founder and Director of Aceleradora de Ciudades, shares her experience from working inside a municipality and now supporting local governments to implement participatory programs.

She talks about the realities inside government, about the tools, and which ones work best for which goals. But in her experience, discipline matters more.

The program does not stop at design. It depends on how teams are organized, whether they get the needed support from political leadership, on champions who are not always the ones with the biggest titles, and on making sure the work is sustainable for public servants. She shares a story when they received so many participatory budgeting proposals that meeting their own deadlines became nearly impossible.

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We’re living through a global democratic crisis, and elections around the world are sending a clear message: the system isn’t working.

It Takes a City is a podcast about participation and democracy, hosted by Stefania Kapronczay, a human rights advocate working on resilient democracies from Budapest, Hungary, and Flavio Proietti Pantosti, a social innovator and entrepreneur focused on public administration from Rome, Italy.

Through conversations with practitioners, we explore lesser-known stories of participation, often from communities with limited resources. Each episode unpacks real tactics, strategic dilemmas, and honest failures, with the goal of offering practical insights.

Visit https://takesacity.com/ or get in touch at ⁠⁠ittakesacity@gmail.com⁠⁠.

Episode 7 takes us to Lisbon, Portugal.

We look at what is probably the best-known participatory tool, participatory budgeting, and discuss how it helped transform Lisbon from a city in crisis into one that attracts people. For instance, the idea of co-working spaces came through participatory budgeting and proved to be key for Lisbon becoming a hub for digital nomads.

Graça Fonseca, former Minister of Culture of Portugal and former Deputy Mayor of the City of Lisbon, shares how participatory budgeting helped transform the city.

The program did not stop with voting on projects, it continued through shared problem-solving, through implementation, and through building a sense of collective ownership between citizens and public servants.

This episode is about what happens when participation becomes a continuous process, not a one-off decision.

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We’re living through a global democratic crisis, and elections around the world are sending a clear message: the system isn’t working.

It Takes a City is a podcast about participation and democracy, hosted by Stefania Kapronczay, a human rights advocate working on resilient democracies from Budapest, Hungary, and Flavio Proietti Pantosti, a social innovator and entrepreneur focused on public administration from Rome, Italy.

Through conversations with practitioners, we explore lesser-known stories of participation, often from communities with limited resources. Each episode unpacks real tactics, strategic dilemmas, and honest failures, with the goal of offering practical insights.

Visit https://takesacity.com/ or get in touch at ⁠⁠ittakesacity@gmail.com⁠⁠.