❮ Projects page Participatory Budgeting Project

Spatial Analysis Project:

The Participatory Budgeting Project seeks to understand the extent to which participatory budgeting results in more equitable and effective capital spending in New York City. Participatory budgeting (PB) is a democratic process in which community members directly decide how to spend part of a public budget. In New York City, over 50,000 residents in 28 city council districts have decided how millions of dollars are invested in their communities each year by coming together to brainstorm ideas, develop these ideas into real projects, and vote to decide which projects get funded.

PBP would like to work with a GIS Fellow to visualize locations of capital projects funded through PB in New York City, to analyze the degree to which winning projects cluster in neighborhoods with low socioeconomic indicators, and to compare the spatial distribution of PB-funded projects with that of capital projects funded by other means.

Data available:

PBP can provide:

• Shapefile of geocoded winning projects from recent cycles of PB in NYC,
• Shapefile of NYC council district boundaries including information about which districts implemented PB throughout the past five years,
• Shapefiles of ACS and Census data aggregated at the block group level to derive key socioeconomic indicators.

While we do not yet have it on hand, we can also provide a spatial dataset of capital projects funded by means other than PB in selected NYC council districts for the comparative part of the study.

Maps and Reports that will be created:

We request that the Fellow will develop:

1. Maps of proposed and winning capital projects funded through PB overlaid on socioeconomic indicators,
2. Maps of capital projects funded by other means overlaid on socioeconomic indicators,
3. A metric or index to summarize socioeconomic characteristics of census block groups, tracts, or neighborhoods,
4. Statistics to measure the degree of clustering in areas with low socioeconomic index values, and
5. A written report describing the methods, assumptions, and conclusions of the study.
6. We expect that the Fellow will use clear independent judgement in choosing research methods, defining assumptions, and identifying new directions for research. The Fellow will work closely with PBP and select members of the North American PB Research Board, which advises and supports research efforts on PB.

How the maps and reports will be used:

The report and maps will be used in PBP’s publicity materials (online and print), statements of impact, and grant applications and reports, as well as those of partner organizations who support PB in North America. We hope that the analysis will serve as an initial model to help researchers and local governments in other North American cities to conduct similar evaluations of their PB program’s equity outcomes.