Description
The goal of the project is to help public and activists in Bratislava to participate easily in decisions about how the city will look like. The problem is availability of information about building permits for new constructions in public space. Without the information people cannot participate and influence the project. At present some city boroughs publish the information about ongoing building permits on their web pages, however, there is a lack of an information channel which would notify people without the need to constantly watch official notice boards of all boroughs. The project aims to encourage measures causing all Bratislava borough governments and building authorities to publish the information also on their web pages. Also a software solution to notify citizens when a new building permit request is filed will be created during the project. The citizens will be able to react quickly, to step in the process and thus influence the future construction works in their surroundings. We will also monitor how the information about new building permit requests is published at the present time. We will seek legal ways to enforce a good publishing procedure in that city borough which turns out as the worst one. The result of the monitoring will be supplemented by a legal analysis, and a “best practice” manual for authorities will be created. The manual will suggest the ideal methods, procedures and tools for publishing information about the planned construction projects. We will also support public participation and provide a simple guide for public with practical hints. We will also participate in selected building permit proceedings, requesting better bicycle infrastructure. The project is not primarily focused to increasing participation in municipal parliament meetings, however, it is likely to contribute to it.
Summary of project results
Ordinary employed citizens will participate in decision-making on the affairs of cities and municipalities, only if they will have easy access to relevant information. In Bratislava there are 17 building authorities and for the people it is impossible to watch constantly official notice boards and websites of all of them. In the long term, project is sustainable. The main outcome of the project is a web portal
www.konania.sk, which automatically process data from websites of building authorities. The portal is well-functioning and in the future only little capacities will be needed for its maintenance. In the future there is a possibility to enlarge it on information from other Slovak cities and it has potential for national use. The goal of the project was to help public and activists in Bratislava to participate easily in decisions about how the city will look like. This goal has been achieved. The portal
www.konania.sk collects in one place all published information on actual building proceedings in Bratislava. The citizens are so able to react quickly, to step in the process and thus influence the future construction work in their surroundings. The project influence directly 20 employees of building authorities, to whom we suggested changes in the way of publishing information. We pointed out concrete shortcomings; we try to explain them that the legal obligation should not be met only formally but in the way that they really fulfill its sense – in this case: easy access of public to information. The project has direct impact also to people who use our portal and manual (till May 95 webpage visitors). The main target groups of the project were people living in Bratislava and the employees of building authorities in Bratislava. In work with the employees we have used direct communication. The main project outcomes are focused on the public. Our project created conditions for people living in Bratislava so they can easily find out and monitor the ongoing civil proceedings and then to participate in them. On the other hand, we open a dialogue with the building authorities and showed them that the public is not their enemy, but is interested in deciding what is happening in the city in which they live.
Summary of bilateral results