#19 Lahti & Maptionnaire: "The Best Experts Are The Citizen Themselves"

This episode takes us back to Finland, and more precisely to the city of Lahti, to discuss public-private partnerships, knowledge-driven community engagement and participatory planning with our guests: Johanna Palomäki, City Architect at the city of Lahti and Maarit Kahila, CEO of Maptionnaire, a community engagement platform for managing public participation processes in a central place.

Have a look at Lahti and Maptionnaire's Use Case on the BABLE Platform: Running a Participatory Budgeting Process in Lahti, Finland.

Overview of the episode:

02:10 - Teaser: Johanna and Maarit reminisce about the first time they met

05:40 - Knowledge-driven community engagement: what does it mean?

09:20 - Whose knowledge counts?

10:40 - Can we make sure that everybody's voice is heard?

13:58 - How should cities use tools such as the Maptionnaire Community Engagement Platform?

20:17 - The democratic process of participatory planning

21:50 - The fear of negative feedback

24:50  - Examples of how the city of Lahti has used the Maptionnaire tool

27:30 - What are the limitations to using such tools?

36:30 - Freaky Friday: our guests switch places and answer questions in each other shoes

39:15 -  Ending Question: To you, what is a Smart City?

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