Participatory initiative “Pully – Heart of the City”

Between 2015 and 2017, the City of Pully conducted a participatory initiative to find out what desires and expectations the population had in terms of the urban quality of the public spaces downtown. Entitled “Pully – Heart of the City”, this consultation invited online participation (surveys, video summaries, reports to download) through a specifically dedicated site, in addition to the actions conducted in the field. The idea was to allow the greatest number of residents and users to express themselves.

Downtown Pully is the subject of many redevelopment projects. In order to involve Pully residents and users in the design of future spaces, The Department of Urban Planning and the Environment commissioned the Canton of Vaud’s School of Management and Engineering (HEIG-VD) to organize a public consultation. The latter is associated with the School of Landscape, Engineering and Architecture (hepia) in order to benefit from its expertise in public spaces.

The initiative relied heavily on information and communication technologies (ICT) to maximize public participation. First, a dedicated site was developed, showing the mapping and the detailed information for each project and construction site downtown. Updated continuously, the site operated as a real support for the consultation: there, participants found an interface with questionnaires from the public survey (conducted simultaneously in the field), workshop summaries and reports, documents available to download, as well as presentations, photos or videos from working groups and public feedback evenings. Today, the site remains open to participation via a form, allowing everyone to give his/her opinion on the urban development of the City.

Digital tools could also be found in the field: on the street, pollsters went to meet the population equipped with tablets to complete the survey questionnaires. The initiative was also the subject of a communication on Pully’s official social networks, to relay the various calls for participation in addition to being deployed “physically” through the City (canvas covers and information boards, public exhibition on Place Neuve, etc.).