IEEE VIS 2024 Content: What Can Interactive Visualization do for Participatory Budgeting in Chicago?

What Can Interactive Visualization do for Participatory Budgeting in Chicago?

Alex Kale - University of Chicago, Chicago, United States

Danni Liu - University of Chicago, Chicago, United States

Maria Gabriela Ayala - University of Chicago, Chicago, United States

Harper Schwab - University of Chicago, Chicago, United States

Andrew M McNutt - University of Washington, Seattle, United States. University of Utah, Salt Lake City, United States

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Room: Bayshore II

2024-10-17T18:09:00ZGMT-0600Change your timezone on the schedule page
2024-10-17T18:09:00Z
Exemplar figure, described by caption below
An illustration of the application scenario for this work, participatory budgeting in Chicago. We investigate the roles that visualization can play in voting on how municipal funding should be spent on neighborhood projects and reporting results of the participatory budgeting vote to stakeholders.
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Keywords

Visualization, Preference elicitation, Digital democracy

Abstract

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.