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Anyone in Paris Can Decide How the City Spends Its Money
Just off the bustling Rue Montorgueil, one of the most commercial streets in Paris, the Centre Cerise, or Cherry Sociocultural Center, is a haven of local community. At the cafe in the back, where the ceiling is covered in a sea of mirrors, a young barista whistles behind the counter and a trio of elderly women chat over an afternoon coffee.
These humble surroundings, simple as they appear, are a pillar of local democracy. And they recently received a much-needed, city-funded renovation.
“Paris has become very expensive. Many people can’t afford to eat in the restaurants around here,” says Anne-Valérie Desprez, a manager at the Cherry. “That’s why we need places like this. To provide everyone with somewhere to come together.”
The Cherry Center cafe. Credit: Peter Yeung
For the past decade, every year, Parisians like Desprez have been able to see their proposals come to life on the streets of the French capital. Under the city’s Participatory Budget, any resident above the age of seven, regardless of their nationality, can propose a project to be paid for by municipal funds. The model, increasingly popular across the globe, is helping authorities spend resources efficiently and boost democratic participation in an era when trust in government is low and political apathy is on the rise.
In Paris, more than 21,000 ideas have been submitted by citizens since the scheme launched in 2014, resulting in 1,345 funded projects and an expenditure of €768 million (almost $900 million), including €263 million set aside for low-income districts. Each proposal must pass a feasibility study by city hall before being voted on by residents online or at hundreds of ballot boxes installed across the city in the fall.
“It is a very good device and it’s important,” says Yves Sintomer, a French researcher and co-author of the book Participatory Budgeting in Europe, an analysis of initiatives in 10 countries. “Paris has invested a lot, and with that you can transform a lot of things.”
It’s led to the creation of rooftop farms, children’s play areas, community art murals, shade structures and baggage storage for the homeless, as well as a number of projects at the Cherry, which was founded in 1999. In 2017, following the center’s first successful budget proposal, benches were installed in the street out front, providing a place for people to congregate for free. Further funding from the participatory budget enabled the center to buy a cargo bike — shared with other local businesses — for short-distance deliveries in 2019, re-do the entry sign in 2021, and renovate the cafe a couple of years later.
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“The place had fallen into disrepair, it was yellowing, the lights weren’t working well,” explains Desprez. “We had to save the cafe.”
While the Parisian participatory budget is now the largest in the world — worth hundreds of millions of euros a year, or five percent of the city’s total spending — the model was pioneered in Brazil in the 1980s, according to Archon Fung, professor of citizenship and self-government at the Harvard Kennedy School. In 1989, he says, the progressive Workers’ Party in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre set aside 10 percent of the annual municipal budget in an effort to help redistribute funding towards low-income communities and to fight corruption by improving transparency.
Participatory budget voting in Paris. Credit: Peter Yeung
Although during the first few years there were logistical challenges, Fung says the Porto Alegre initiative went on to become a “huge success,” funneling resources to communities in need and involving tens of thousands of citizens in the political process. From 1988 to 1997, for example, the percentage of households with sewer and water connections increased from 75 to 98 percent. The number of schools more than quadrupled. Public housing increased more than tenfold.
“It really did work, allocating more to disadvantaged people and reducing corruption,” says Fung. “It put a big thumb on the scale [to make the city more equal].”
Since then, participatory budgets have exploded in popularity and spread across the globe. According to Participedia, a resource founded by Fung in 2010, there are more than 2,350 examples of innovative schemes involving the public in democratic processes (including but not limited to participatory budgets) across 160 countries today. These include a Canadian non-profit working with prisoners to decide how to invest five percent of its resources; development agencies launching a budget with residents in the west African nation of Benin; and British firefighting authorities collaborating with locals on how money is spent in order to improve safety. In New York City, which launched its pilot initiative in 2011 with four city council districts, over 93,000 residents cast ballots to decide how to spend $30 million of the city’s 2026 budget.
Proponents say participatory budgets provide authorities with valuable information about the real needs of communities, are an efficient use of resources and create buy-in and engagement from local citizens.
“In local and national democracies all over the west, there’s a greater desire for democratic innovation driven by a dissatisfaction with political systems and how democracy is working,” says Fung.
A 2025 study found that, on average, municipalities in North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America that adopted participatory budgeting saw public trust rise significantly — from 55 percent in 2020 to 70 percent in 2024. The researchers concluded that the model “fosters financial prudence, reduces corruption risks and strengthens public engagement in governance.”
The 2025 participatory budget in Paris saw a record 162,395 residents vote. Credit: Peter Yeung
Experts like Fung argue that participatory budgets are more successful when they have a clear impact on people’s lives. Therefore, projects on housing, water and energy work well, but addressing more complex issues such as climate change is tougher. Pilots with state-level participatory budgets in Brazil also faced difficulties, he adds.
“It’s more appropriate for the local level, to address very tangible problems in a community,” Fung explains.
Context matters, too. While one of the key problems faced in Porto Alegre was the deeply-entrenched corruption, it’s simply not on the same scale in Montreal, where political disengagement is more of a concern. The goals of participatory budgets should be adapted accordingly.
Back in Paris, the 2025 edition saw 261 projects proposed and 104 selected after voting by a record 162,395 residents.
City hall officials point to a crisis of democracy as one of the main reasons it has invested so heavily in citizen participation. “We believe these actions allow us to reconnect with our fellow citizens, at a time when the democratic crisis reflects a lack of trust and a feeling of disconnect from public affairs,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “We don’t simply invite Parisians to participate every six years at elections; we empower them throughout the term. This citizen participation enriches our public policies, making them more tailored and better suited to their needs.”
The spokesperson also pointed to other democratic mechanisms, such as referenda and the Citizens’ Assembly, which have led to shared e-scooters being banned from public spaces, and the decision to create 500 “garden streets” throughout Paris.
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Yet researcher Sintomer argues that Paris’ participatory efforts do not go far enough. Major policy decisions, such as banning all vehicles from the major road running along the right bank of the river Seine, were not put to the public, he says. Sintomer also argues that the deliberation aspect of the participatory budget is currently “not very significant” — in essence, there is voting but not much debate.
City hall, too, admits there have been challenges. It has had to rework departments that weren’t adapted to working with citizens, and meanwhile many Parisians are still unaware of the very existence of the participatory budget. A study is underway to take stock of the decade of the program and identify potential avenues for improvement.
Nonetheless, those at the Cherry Center, which also hosts language exchanges, exercise and knitting classes, and art exhibitions, see the participatory budget as a step towards breaching the divides between politicians, policy and real people.
“This is a way for our voices to be heard, especially at the local level,” says Desprez. “Every person can be involved.”
The post Anyone in Paris Can Decide How the City Spends Its Money appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.
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