Governance and community building: what conditions are needed ?
What kind of conditions is required to enable citizens and stakeholders in co-creating their own community, as a source of social capital and societal innovations? Well …. definitely a new way of governance. A different mind-set from the public services & decision makers.
This all has to do with the following questions:
1. How do you look at the citizens and stakeholders: as producers and innovators of the
community or as consumers and end users of your services?
2. How do you enable the civil society to build their own communities and participate
sustainably on your greater plan of societal innovations and development? By reacting
or by creating?
3. Can you recall a practical example in which citizens or stakeholders came up with an
innovative idea that was contrary to your own policy/regulation? What did
predominated your policy/regulation or the innovative idea?
4. When was the last time that you released of adjusted your own policy/design in
favour of community building and societal innovation?
5. To what extent are the resources in - for instance Espoo - being used for building the
social capital and the greater societal development of this region? What can you do
to get more use of these resources?
6. What (financial) resources are you providing yourself to stimulate citizens, artists,
organizations, enterpreneurs in forming and implementing ideas for their own
community and societal innovations?