What Can Interactive Visualization do for Participatory Budgeting in Chicago?

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Kale, Alex, Liu, Danni, Ayala, Maria Gabriela, Schwab, Harper, McNutt, Andrew
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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author Kale, Alex
Liu, Danni
Ayala, Maria Gabriela
Schwab, Harper
McNutt, Andrew
author_facet Kale, Alex
Liu, Danni
Ayala, Maria Gabriela
Schwab, Harper
McNutt, Andrew
contents Participatory budgeting (PB) is a democratic approach to allocating municipal spending that has been adopted in many places in recent years, including in Chicago. Current PB voting resembles a ballot where residents are asked which municipal projects, such as school improvements and road repairs, to fund with a limited budget. In this work, we ask how interactive visualization can benefit PB by conducting a design probe-based interview study (N=13) with policy workers and academics with expertise in PB, urban planning, and civic HCI. Our probe explores how graphical elicitation of voter preferences and a dashboard of voting statistics can be incorporated into a realistic PB tool. Through qualitative analysis, we find that visualization creates opportunities for city government to set expectations about budget constraints while also granting their constituents greater freedom to articulate a wider range of preferences. However, using visualization to provide transparency about PB requires efforts to mitigate potential access barriers and mistrust. We call for more visualization professionals to help build civic capacity by working in and studying political systems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_20103
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle What Can Interactive Visualization do for Participatory Budgeting in Chicago?
Kale, Alex
Liu, Danni
Ayala, Maria Gabriela
Schwab, Harper
McNutt, Andrew
Human-Computer Interaction
Participatory budgeting (PB) is a democratic approach to allocating municipal spending that has been adopted in many places in recent years, including in Chicago. Current PB voting resembles a ballot where residents are asked which municipal projects, such as school improvements and road repairs, to fund with a limited budget. In this work, we ask how interactive visualization can benefit PB by conducting a design probe-based interview study (N=13) with policy workers and academics with expertise in PB, urban planning, and civic HCI. Our probe explores how graphical elicitation of voter preferences and a dashboard of voting statistics can be incorporated into a realistic PB tool. Through qualitative analysis, we find that visualization creates opportunities for city government to set expectations about budget constraints while also granting their constituents greater freedom to articulate a wider range of preferences. However, using visualization to provide transparency about PB requires efforts to mitigate potential access barriers and mistrust. We call for more visualization professionals to help build civic capacity by working in and studying political systems.
title What Can Interactive Visualization do for Participatory Budgeting in Chicago?
topic Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.20103