Although participatory budgeting (PB) was introduced in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2005, it has yet to be widely adopted. While PB has great potential to enhance citizen participation in the democratic process, little academic research has focused on the utility of PB as a mechanism for citizen empowerment in the region. The purpose of this case study was to gain further understanding of the role of civil society in educating and empowering the citizens of Ijede LCDA in Lagos State, Nigeria to participate effectively in budgetary decision-making processes. The data were gathered from 15 semi-structured, one-on-one interviews of purposefully selected participants that included adult citizens of Ijede, government officials, politicians, and representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) connected to the budget process, two follow-up focus groups with participants, and analysis of government budgetary documents. Using Avritzer's theory of participatory institutions as the foundation, the study explored stakeholder perceptions of how citizens can be effectively educated and empowered to participate in the PB process. The data revealed the fragility of PB when local government officials suspended the process because other financial demands were considered more expedient than PB, a situation made possible in the absence of a legal framework institutionalizing the process. Another major theme uncovered is that PB must engage community-based organizations to be effective. Positive social change in the form of enhanced citizen participation in the political process can come about in Nigeria if PB is implemented under an institutionalized legal framework that guarantees sustainability.

Yes / Population Health Management (PHM) relies on the analysis of data from several sources to account for the complex interaction of factors that contribute to the health and well-being of a population, while considering biases and inequalities across sub-populations. Visualisation is emerging as an essential tool for insight generation from data shared and linked across services including healthcare, education, housing, policing, etc. However, visualisation design is challenged by poor data connectivity and quality, high dimensionality and complexity of real-world routinely collected data, in addition to the heterogeneity of users’ backgrounds and tasks. The Creative Visualisation Opportunities (CVO) framework provides a structured approach for working with diverse communities of visualisation stakeholders and defines a set of participatory activities for the effective elicitation of requirements and visualisation design alternatives. We conducted three workshops, applying variations of the CVO framework, with over one hundred participants from the PHM domain, including clinicians, researchers, government and private sector representatives, and local communities. In this paper, we present the results of preliminary analysis of these activities and report on the perceived impact of visualisation in this domain from a stakeholders’ perspective. We report real-world successes and limitations of applying the framework in different formats (through online and in-person workshops), and reflect on lessons learned for task analysis and visualisation design in the PHM domain.

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Participatory Action Mapping (PAM) as a methodology strives to fill the gaps created by participatory and critical mapping methodologies. Public participatory GIS (PPGIS), which often fails to elicit a bottom up approach to mapping, and community mapping, which typically produces critical mappings that often fail to be taken seriously by decision makers both fall short in offering members of the public meaningful opportunities to make claims about particular places. Through the implementation of a critical mapping methodology that utilizes professional cartography techniques, PAM offers community organizations the ability to assert their claims through maps. Using a critical cartography lens, this case study focuses on PAM with a community-based organization in west Atlanta and reveals how this methodology can be successful in engaging professional mapping practices to communicate the truths of, and subsequently inspire action among, community members.

Participatory budgeting is a tool that can be used to improve social accountability within public institutions through increasing the participation of citizens in decision-making processes about the distribution of public funds. The global experiences from the use of participatory budgeting indicate that the impact of the initiatives has ranged from very weak to highly successful, and that the successfulness depends on certain factors in the environment where it is implemented – even though there is no agreement on what these factors are. Albania is one of the countries where a range of civil society organizations are implementing participatory budgeting initiatives and is at the same time a country that faces one of the highest corruption levels in Europe. Despite the fact that these initiatives could bring very important impacts, very little academic research is done on this topic. The purpose of this thesis was therefore to investigate to what extent the participatory budgeting initiatives in Albania have improved social accountability in the Albanian societies, as well as what factors that have affected this impact and how. The investigation was carried out as a case study in Albania where nine different participatory budgeting initiatives were examined through conducting semi-structured interviews with the organizations implementing these projects, as well as one expert organization that has helped the other organizations to improve their knowledge on the tool and one public official from a municipality involved in one of the initiatives. The research of this thesis found that the Albanian participatory budgeting initiatives have succeeded to do minor improvements on social accountability through strengthening the voice of the citizens and the enforcement mechanism, while formal answerability still is low and negatively affects the sustainability of these improvements. It was further found that seventeen factors from five different categories have affected the ability of the initiatives to improve social accountability – some more than others. These categories were: formal and informal political systems, supportive legal and policy frameworks, local capacity and knowledge, free media institutions, and availability of information. The contributions of the thesis included also the finding of a factor that was not mentioned by the theory (trust by local governments in civil society organizations), as well as a structure on how these influencing factors interact with each other.

Over the past thirty years, China’s transition to a semi-open market economy has manifested as a process of rapid urban development. Low-income, migrant populations who arrive in the city in search of better work opportunities are being integrated into a class of new urban poor and must contend with limited housing options. Urban villages, which are recognized as rural, collectively owned land located within the urban boundary, are now becoming targeted for government supported urban renewal. Because the urban villages’ land lies outside the regulatory reach of the municipal government, these areas tend to develop in an informal manner and attract low-income migrant tenants. However, urban village tenants are being excluded from the renewal process. The aim of this research is to examine these widely debated concerns within the case of the ongoing Caiwuwei urban village renewal project in Shenzhen. Through this research, I reconsider the functionality of power relations within China’s rapid economic growth, particularly between the urban development decision makers and the marginalized migrant tenant groups. These groups of migrant workers who rent housing units in urban villages have a stake in the urban renewal process because they participate in the urban village social network supporting the need of cheaper supply from the surrounding area. By applying theories of public participation to the process of giving avenue to speak up what they need, which is empowering from the urban village tenant groups, I identify challenges and possibilities for the inclusion of public voices in future government processes in China. I suggest that the project finance model of a public-private partnership could be structured around this collaborative process of renewal, in order to develop a platform for ongoing public participation, particularly in the provision of social services and institutions within the urban village community. Such an arrangement for urban redevelopment will facilitate the balancing of influence among disparate income groups. / text

Master of Landscape Architecture / Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Jason S. Brody / Recycling in many cities faces dilemmas with accessibility and education, especially within the public realm, which leads to a lack of participation in this sustainable activity. The City of Kansas City, Missouri does not currently provide recycling solutions for multi-family and commercial businesses and has minimal to non-existent recycling infrastructure within its downtown’s public realm. Envisioning a new recycling system for a city requires many entities to come together in the design process. However, the city, landscape architects, and other designers frequently overlook incorporating children into the participatory community design process, even though children have knowledge, experiences, and ideas to offer (Speak, 2000). Incorporating many avenues of community input can benefit the design outcomes, and children should be included in the participatory design process when it engages their built environment. The Kansas City Design Center (KCDC) produced a vision plan and conceptual site designs for downtown Kansas City’s recycling system. Community input was part of the KCDC studio project’s design process by utilizing a series of advisory council meetings, professional reviews, and open houses. This report integrated another form of community involvement into the project by working with children on designing urban space and playful infrastructure focused on encouraging participation in recycling. A series of design charrettes were conducted with 5th grade students from Kansas City’s urban charter school Crossroads Academy due to the school’s focus on immersion in the urban environment. The students’ design charrette ideas added a new perspective to how urban space and recycling infrastructure could encourage participation. These ideas and perspectives were shared with classmates and utilized to further design development in the recycling project's streetscape "Links" strategy. As the project developed, the researcher observed how the children's ideas impacted the "Links" strategy design coming through in playful ground plane designs, interactive elements, concepts of place-making, and considerations for a variety of users. The participatory process with the children was most influential on those involved directly with the children's process. This allowed the children's ideas to become inherent base knowledge when designing. Engaging youth’s imaginative minds in the design process for urban space and recycling infrastructure sparked new playful perspectives on how to encourage participation and led to meaningful recycling design outcomes within the public realm.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Jason S. Brody / Kansas City has the opportunity to expand its recycling programs and infrastructure through a participatory design process conducted at the Kansas City Design Center (KCDC). Because participatory design techniques can allow researchers to include members of the community in the planning process, project outcomes can generally be more successful. In the example of the recycling and composting project led by students at the KCDC, an advisory committee made of professionals and members of the community represented many stakeholder interests. Because of the wide array of feedback from the community, the process of design for the studio was not linear, but rather, it transformed over a period of research, design, further research, and redesign. The students first approached local recycling issues within the scope of a document written for grant funding. However as students responded to feedback from the advisory committee, the final proposals were altered to better address truer community needs. Other aspects for how to communicate and respond to critical feedback was also realized. This report aims to discover how participatory design aided this project and made its outcomes and delivery more agreeable to the larger population.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Agricultural Economics / Jason S. Bergtold / Timothy J. Dalton / Adoption of technological improvements are crucial to increase agricultural productiviy to help reduce poverty by obtaining higher farm incomes due to higher productivity and lower production costs. However, the introduction of new agricultural technologies has not always been successful or had diffuse adoption. Factors that determine farmers’ adoption decisions are: 1) farm and farmers' characteristics; 2) technology attributes, and 3) the farming objective. Understanding these factors and how they affect adoption of new technologies on the farm is crucial to assure higher levels of adoption. The over all purpose of this thesis is to explore the adoption process of new technologies and practices by farmers. This is accomplished through three essays to meet the objectives of the thesis. The purpose of the first essay was to evaluate whether or not farmers in the western U.S. are willing to grow specialized oilseed crops that could be used for certified hydrotreated renewable jet (HRJ) fuel production and incorporate them into existing wheat-based production systems under contract. Results indicate that providing oilseeds crops and contracts with desired attributes and features would positively affect farmers' decisions to incorporate oilseed crops into their rotation system. Preferred seed and contract attributes that may affect a farmer’ adoption decision differ across different geographic regions of the U.S. The second essay focused on identifying factors that impact participation and farmers' decision to adopt soil conservation and fertilization management practices for cassava producers in Thailand and Vietnam. Results indicate that asset ownership and cassava yield positively influence participation. Adoption of new practices was positively linked to farmers’ participation in training activities, use of fish ponds (as a measure of alternative agricultural practices), presence of a nearby starch factory, and slope of the land. Finally, the purpose of the third essay was to examine extension educators' characteristics that affect educators' selection decision of outreach methods in the U.S. This essay examines the diffusion process that impacts adoption of best management practices by farmers. The decision extension educators make for selecting a teaching method is affected by the relationship between the objectives of the learning process and the characteristics of the teaching method.

Child-computer interaction researchers are increasingly recognising the benefits of directly involving children in the design of new technology. This has resulted in the development of several design methods for involving children in the technology design process, using approaches such as Participatory Design (PD). More recently there has been a greater focus on involving children with diverse needs, as technology can often be particularly beneficial within the education of these children. One such group is children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and in recent years there has been a sharp rise in the amount of technology being developed specifically for this population. However, the needs and preferences of this user group can differ from the general child population due to the specific characteristics of ASD, with these differences making it more challenging for adult designers to develop appropriate technologies. This thesis therefore seeks to establish the potential of using PD to involve children with ASD within the technology design process through the development of a new PD method, which aims to support the typical difficulties of children with ASD at the same time as utilising their characteristic strengths. A qualitative approach has been followed in order to understand firstly the ability of children with ASD to undertake typical design tasks; secondly the degree children with ASD are able to participate in the design process; and thirdly the ability of children with ASD to collaborate within a design team. The results reveal that children with ASD can undertake typical design tasks, but some children may require additional support to generate and communicate their design ideas. It is shown that a flexible approach should be taken with regard to the involvement of children with ASD within the technology design process, and the importance of the adaptability of the adult’s role in supporting the children’s participation and collaboration is additionally highlighted. This research has led to the development of a new PD method, IDEAS, which is tailored to the specific needs of children with ASD through the incorporation of flexible structured and supportive features.