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.

Episode Six takes us to Delhi, India.

In 2001, in the low-income neighbourhoods of east Delhi, residents used India's new Right to Information Act to audit the Public Distribution System — the government programme meant to deliver subsidised food to the poor. The method, the jan sunwai or public hearing, brought citizens, officials, and an independent panel into the same room to compare what the state claimed it had done with what people had actually received.

Sowmya Kidambi and Suchi Pande take us through the long arc of that practice: from grassroots campaigning in Delhi, to the first government-backed social audit unit in Andhra Pradesh, to the sixteen pieces of Indian legislation where social audits are now mandatory.

They also tell us what the law alone cannot do — and why the room itself, with low-income residents and officials reading the same page, remains the radical part.

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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 Five takes us to Lezhë, Albania.

In conversation with Vasilika Laska, Director of Strategic Projects for the Municipality, we explore how the city is rethinking its foundations after a severe debt crisis.

How should we spend the entire budget? By opening up this rarely asked question, the municipality invites local stakeholders, including residents, businesses, and civil society, not just to decide on a small portion, but to shape priorities for the whole.

In doing so, Lezhë is experimenting with a more radical approach to participation and beginning to redefine how local governance works.

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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 Four takes us to Athens, Greece. In conversation with Amalia Zepou, former Vice Mayor of the City of Athens, we explore how one citizen’s frustration with the state of her city grew into her running for office and adopting a new model for civic engagement.

All this in a context where volunteering often carries negative connotations and trust between citizens and public servants is low.

Through the synAthina platform, we see how creating new digital tools can help bridge divides, recognize citizens and public servants as partners, and build more inclusive forms of participation.

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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 Three takes us to Surakarta, Indonesia.

In conversation with Nina Asterina and Bima Pratama Putra from the Kota Kita Foundation, we explore what it means to take inclusion seriously.

On a single busy street, where children walk past a school, a prison, shops, and constant traffic, they were asked what they needed.

One of the first answers was a swimming pool.

Instead of dismissing it, the team explored what it really meant, and realized that what was missing was simpler and more possible: trees and green space.

By taking their voices seriously, the project shows how inclusion can improve life for everyone who uses the street, including adults, people with disabilities, and even shop owners.

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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 Two takes us to Chimanimani, Zimbabwe.

In conversation with Nyasha Frank Mpahlo from Green Governance Africa, we explore how legislative theatre can transform confrontation into dialogue.

Through drama, community members and government officials come together to reflect on local climate challenges in a setting that feels less formal and less threatening than a typical meeting room.

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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.