BBBlockchain: Blockchain-Based Participation in Urban Development

Abstract

Urban development processes often suffer from mistrust amongst different stakeholder groups. The lack of transparency within complex and long-term planning processes and the limited scope for co-creation and joint decision-making constitute a persistent problem for successful participation in urban planning. Civic technology has the potential to improve this predicament. With BBBlockchain, we propose a blockchain-based participation platform, which is able to address all layers of participation. In the development of the platform, we focus on two key aspects: How to increase transparency and how to introduce enhanced co-decision-making. To this end, we exploit the immutable nature of blockchains and effectively offer a platform that excludes monopolistic control over information. The decision-making process is governed by smart contracts implementing, for example, timestamping of planning documents, opinion polls, and the management of a participatory budget. Our architecture and prototypes show the operational capabilities of this approach in a series of use cases for urban development.