Gwangmyeong Mayor Park Seung-won emphasized on September 5 that realistic solutions can be created when citizens, who experience local issues firsthand, actively participate in identifying problems and the resolution process.
During a workshop titled 'Citizen Participation AI Social Living Lab - Let's Work Together,' held at the city hall conference room with 100 citizens in attendance, Mayor Park expressed this viewpoint.
This initiative marks a significant step in Mayor Park's efforts to position citizens not merely as subjects of administration but as key players in solving local issues.
The project aims to connect citizens' experiences and ideas to policy-making and validate them in real-world settings through a 'citizen participation pilot project.' This aligns with Mayor Park's vision of enhancing civic engagement and social solidarity in governance.
The workshop is notable as it represents the first step in translating Mayor Park's emphasis on 'community-driven local change' into actual policy processes.
Notably, the approach shifts away from a top-down administrative model where problems and solutions are unilaterally determined, allowing citizens to identify local issues, contemplate solutions, and participate in implementation and validation.
Mayor Park aims to develop a citizen participation model that transforms ideas into tangible local changes.
This approach goes beyond merely soliciting citizen opinions; it reinforces the philosophy of participatory governance where citizens are involved from the planning stage through execution and evaluation.
The 100 participants were divided into 10 groups to identify local issues closely related to their daily lives, such as care, youth, culture, digital matters, and the environment.
Each group shared the inconveniences they experience and discussed specific solutions that the community needs to address.
Following group presentations, the issues were shared, and teams were formed to participate in future pilot projects through AI-assisted task matching.
Mayor Park highlighted the importance of expanding participation from 'idea-generating citizens' to 'action-taking citizens.'
He plans to develop the identified issues into a citizen participation social living lab pilot project by December.
Citizens will implement solutions and assess the effects and limitations that arise during the process. Mayor Park will support necessary activities and share the progress and outcomes with citizens in December.
Participants expressed optimism about this new form of citizen engagement.
One citizen remarked, 'It was meaningful that instead of just reporting local issues that I found inconvenient, we could actively seek solutions ourselves.'
A participant focused on youth issues stated, 'It was great to discuss youth problems from the perspective of those affected and to think about solutions. I hope this discussion leads to actual policy changes.'
This social living lab is noteworthy as it experiments with expanding Gwangmyeong's citizen participation policies into practical problem-solving and local innovation.
Most importantly, it differentiates itself from traditional methods of gathering citizen feedback by creating a structure where citizens discover problems, devise solutions, and implement them while verifying outcomes.
Meanwhile, Mayor Park aims to connect citizens' ideas from their daily lives to actual local changes, establishing a Gwangmyeong model of regional innovation that combines citizen participation with social solidarity economics.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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