The Mobile Parliament
Basic information
Project Title
Full project title
Category
Project Description
Mobilising citizens, calling them for a long-term involvement in the life of the city is a societal challenge and a democratic safeguard.
Getting as close as possible to inhabitants so as to create the favourable conditions for discussion and citizen participation is everyone’s responsibility.
Emblem of the Permanent Democracy event, the Mobile Parliament for the City of Bordeaux addresses these challenges to make direct democracy a practice of empowerment, a shared culture, a concrete utopia.
Project Region
EU Programme or fund
Description of the project
Summary
The Mobile Parliament is a collective adventure that has brought together a Project Lead, ETICA, an architect to design the idea, Bureau d'Architecture Modeste, and a manufacturer to build the project, Bureau Baroque.
The Mobile Parliament was born from a meeting between ETICA and the City hall of Bordeaux that was just looking for an appealing and attention calling element for their permanent democracy project called “Assises de la Démocratie permanente” .
Its creation is based on a shared observation: while there are many participatory bodies, they are too rarely identified, and too rarely attended to by the great majority. Limited access to information, the language of which is often difficult to understand, lack of pedagogy concerning expectations and method, meetings behind closed doors, inconvenient hours... The question of citizen mobilisation in an inclusive and egalitarian vision remains unsatisfactory. One of the most striking evidences is the desertion from ballot boxes in our democracies.
Although participation has long been debated upon, it yet remains wishful thinking, a concept still to become real, despite numerous initiatives coming from the civil society and from politicians. For almost 20 years, the Association Etica has committed to turn participative dynamics and collective intelligence into tools to exercise citizenship-learning for all.
Based on our experience of a field actor, it appeared to us that since inhabitants did not answer the proposals to take part in institutional instances, the offer to participate had to change so as to come closer to the people, enter their living environments, and rely on their users’ experiences. This is why we created a light structure, a neutral and symbolic space, nomad, welcoming, familiar, reassuring, multifunctional, ecological and aesthetic that can answer citizens’ request: listen to us, there are things we have to say to you.
Key objectives for sustainability
The concept of sustainability is to be understood with a global approach. The ecological transition does not go without democratic transition. The Mobile Parliament contributes to the Sustainable Development Goals and as a priority to the 3 SDGs achievement:
G11 Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
The Mobile Parliament will promote citizens’ involvement, as an inclusive approach, to take part in the implementation of infrastructures and local services in favour of inclusion, efficient usage of resources, adaptation to climate change impacts.
G16 Promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies
The Mobile Parliament contributes concretely to the target. 16.7 Ensure responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision-making at all levels.
G17 Revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development
The initiative results from a multi-stakeholder partnership of organisations from the civil society and from a collectivity through the mobilisation of expertise, know-how and financial resources aiming at the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals at a local level.
It answers to 2 specific objectives:
Design a sustainable eco-constructed structure
Made of wood, ultimate economic and ecological material; the essences are local from sustainable forests: pine tree and pine plywood;the cover is a canvas made of 100% recycled yarn;it does not use polluting energy, its ecological impact is very low;transports are limited to the strict minimum. Because of its modularity, inhabitants can move the Parliament’s modules themselves, from square to square, just with a mere hand push.
Invite inhabitants to take part in the social, ecological and democratic transformation
Aiming at an ecologic and democratic transition, the Mobile Parliament moves around Bordeaux to serve the co-construction of a local participative democracy and to allow its people to participate to the local governance beyond the election deadlines.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
Inspired by the first ancient Roman theatres, the Mobile Parliament is a circular eco-constructed structure, made of wood and composed of 13 separate stepped modules
Objectives:
- Design a nomad light inviting modular structure
- Design a structure accessible for all
- Design a structure that fits in a wide range of environments
Advantages
Modular, easy to assemble and disassemble, easy to move with a mere hand push at the back of the module to different areas in the neighbourhood.
Outdoor structure, it has the comfort and the cosiness of the open air while, thanks to its shape, keeping the privacy and the serenity necessary to reflexion, listening, exchanging.
With a 180° vision allowing its participants to see each other, the Mobile Parliament provides safely an enabling framework to speak and to express point of views.
An architectural option truly dedicated to gathering
Achieving the ultimate goal of this event structure through the creation of an architectural coherence between aspect, function, security, use circumstances and integration in a wide variety of places, was the leading principle of the Mobile Parliament design.
This adequacy was made possible thanks to the choice of the wood material that gives the structure its neutral and frugal aspect, without being trivial. The sober yet visible design of the Mobile Parliament is enhanced by the work details in pine that display a very expressive and modern grain.
Key objectives for inclusion
Inclusion is at the core of the project; it is its foundation
The Mobile Parliament aims at:
- Inviting all in a caring manner, without prejudice, irrespective of ethnicity, colour, sexual orientation, language, religion, opinion, national or social origin, wealth or birth, or any other situation, to take part in the debate, to express viewpoints, to mobilise their expertise and to contribute to the collective decision.
Minorities, visible and invisible as well as the Young are, most of the time, those further away from participation and decision-making bodies. The feeling of illegitimacy is often the main hindrance to take the leap.
As international, national and local, recommendations advocate, (Rio Summit, Aarhus European Convention, enacted by UNESCO in 1998, ODD, Agenda 21), involving inhabitants, in their diversity, in the elaboration, the implementation and the evaluation of public policies are one of the leverage effects that allow to fight against social exclusion, to reinforce active citizenship and to initiate economical, ecological, societal and democratic transformations that are necessary for a sustainable world.
As an answer to this challenge, the Mobile Parliament was conceived to reach inhabitants directly, as close as possible to their places of life and social life. In the Mobile Parliament, there are no stage and no experts’ panel; each person is legitimate to an equal position.
On the technical side, with regard to accessibility for people with a disability, the Parliament foresees a minimum of two places to allow people in a wheelchair to take part in the assembly.
Results in relation to category
The first spontaneous reaction to the Mobile Parliament is one of exclamation: How beautiful! A question: What is this? Its aesthetic, its unexpected aspect in a public place raises as much curiosity as interest or desire from strollers or inhabitants to be a part of it.
Specially in priority neighbourhoods, it allows giving back its rightful value to people’s voice, to users’ voice. It gives the opportunity to federate communities around high social and environmental value-added projects that impact directly their daily life.
To gather physically, chat, dream and imagine the city of tomorrow are many strong expectations that COVID 19 pandemic has hindered, most often to the detriment of the most vulnerable ones.
The first exits of the Parliament, in parallel to the progressive open-up, allow to reply immediately to the vital need for a social link, meeting and sharing.
It is also a tool for public space re-appropriation, in particular for those who merely walk by (women, the elderly, people with a disability)…
The Mobile Parliament invites inhabitants of a neighbourood to meet, to recognize each other. As such, it contributes to the emergence of more inclusive and respectful communities. Finally, the Mobile Parliament is a multi-function structure at disposal of citizens and associations in Bordeaux. And the requests are plenty! This possibility of appropriation by all multiplies the Mobile Parliament’s potential as a meeting and sharing point.
How Citizens benefit
As Project Lead, ETICA conceived the Mobile Parliament as an enabling tool for participation and has coordinated its implementation with the various partners.
The Project is based on a field diagnosis led by ETICA since 2014 with stakeholders from the civil society, citizens, local authorities as well as elected politicians. This diagnosis has highlighted the need to reinvent participation spaces, to put them at the centre of the life of the city, both literally and figuratively. This is the ambition we targeted with the creation of this hybrid object. In the frame of the permanent Democracy Assembly organised by the City of Bordeaux, inhabitants have been asked in parallel and through a participative numeric platform to express their expectations concerning the use modalities of the Parliament in the public space. Organisations of the civil society also contribute to the implementation of the project, being closely linked to the organisation and the facilitation of the “Assembly of the Permanent Democracy”.
Eventually and as shown in the whole application, the ultimate goal of the Mobile Parliament is to involve citizens in an efficient manner in the programming of their local politics. It is the people and civil society stakeholders who will keep the tool alive across time.
Innovative character
Experimenting organisational and social innovation approaches is part of Etica’s DNA since its creation. The project of a Mobile Parliament for Bordeaux was indeed born from the capitalisation of our experiences to accompany the emergence of participative approaches on the local territories. A Mobile Parliament for Bordeaux is part of a living experimental democratic process that makes the citizen an essential stakeholder of the participative dynamics; it is innovative.
Interactions that take place therein, viewpoints that are shared and discussed, decision patterns that are invented in a particular context and for a specific objective, this is innovating, or it can generate innovation.
Because the Mobile parliament is a place for emergence of speech, of ideas, of fruitful encounters, of search for collective solutions, it is an brand new space that brings potential innovations, whether they be social, environmental, educational or cultural.
Assuming that social innovation is the capacity to answer a hardly satisfied or unsatisfied need, the Mobile Parliament is an efficient tool to palliate the difficulties in mobilising those citizens, who are the most remote from the bodies. Moreover, the Mobile Parliament is a potential generator of innovation as it allows inhabitants to express and explore new ideas in favour of improvement of their living environment and to invent the new modalities of their commitment in the democratic life. The emergence and valorisation of the voice of the people is an interesting leverage to generate new knowledge and new practices.
