The Multi-City Challenge Mexico 2020: a Successful Exercise in Citizen Participation

The Multi-City Challenge Mexico 2020 is an initiative led by The Governance Lab (The GovLab) at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering and supported by the Tinker Foundation and the Council of Nuevo León.  Its objective is to work with five municipalities in Northern Mexico, chosen in the framework of a competitive call, to promote the knowledge and experiences of the residents of Hermosillo, Reynosa, San Nicolás, San Pedro, and Torreón for the development of innovative public policies public to overcome complex, persistent and often shared urban challenges. The winning ideas were selected through an open challenge and seek to solve specific problems identified by the municipalities and that will be developed into scalable and implementable prototypes.

More than 5,6000 participants comprising citizens, students, NGOs, and other civil society organizations registered to participate in the Multi-City Challenge Mexico 2020, contributing to a total of 237 proposals and 8,573 votes. The objective: to co-create public policies and projects with the municipal governments of  Hermosillo, Reynosa, San Nicolás, San Pedro, and Torreón.  

The Multi-City Challenge aims to connect the  knowledge and unique experience of residents with the challenges faced by governments and, in the process, make governments more transparent, innovative, participatory, and collaborative. Working with The GovLab and New York University, each municipality identified two pressing challenges to be solved jointly with residents. Thus, taking advantage of the collective intelligence of the public to solve complex problems. 

The Awards Ceremony  took place last Friday, November 6, and was live streamed through The Govlab’s YouTube channel, to an audience of over 800 and  now  has over 1,090 views. During the ceremony, the director of The GovLab, Professor Beth Noveck, congratulated the 5 municipalities for their efforts to promote citizen participation in their jurisdictions and for supporting a model of participatory democracy that takes citizens’ ideas into account in the design of public policies. She also congratulated all the winners and thanked them for taking a step forward to directly influencing the programs that most affect them and their community. "Thank you for contributing your expertise and unique perspective on what can help improve our cities and improve lives," said Beth Noveck. 

The five Municipal Presidents of Hermosillo, Reynosa, San Nicolás, San Pedro, and Torreón also attended the award ceremony and introduced the winners. They shared their admiration, joy, and complicity with the results of the project. Jorge Zermeño, the Mayor of the City of Torreón City, congratulated the Multi-City Challenge team and emphasized Torreón's commitment to promoting citizen participation and innovative ideas that create better collaboration between governments and society. According to Zermeño "we hope to make the project a reality and to continue to work hand-in-hand with citizens to seek innovative proposals that help create a  better city for all."

Miguel Treviño, the Mayor of San Pedro Garza García, expressed great enthusiasm and mentioned that the projects will be closely supported by the municipal government as they strengthen a culture of participation with much-added value. He said he felt very fortunate as Municipal President to witness the political participation of young people and expressed that this is “a reason for hope for us as public servants and for the entire community of San Pedro. We are here to support the winning teams so that the entire community benefits from their ideas."

Representing San Nicolás de los Garza, Dr. Zeferino Salgado Almaguer, the Municipal President of San Nicolás, announced that they will be supporting the projects, and that “it is an honor to hear from the new generations, which is a sign that they are ready and that the young generations keep on dreaming on how where we live could be an even better place ”.

Dr. Maki Esther Ortiz Dominguez, Mayor of the city of Reynosa, expressed that she values ​​the work of the Multi-City Challenge in implementing innovative solutions to major city problems while promoting the use of participatory methodologies. She reiterated the city’s commitment to work hand-in-hand with the winners of the open challenge, who will have the support of the municipal team, and communicated that “the opportunity to be part of initiatives such as the MCC reaffirms our idea that governing with and for citizens should be a priority in this new form of participatory democracy.”

Finally, Célida López Cárdenas, Mayor of Hermosillo, expressed her gratitude to the participants “for their desire to build and create a much more inclusive and plural city” and emphasized the importance of promoting “citizen participation that is listened to and obeyed by the authorities". She also thanked the participants for their love for the city of Hermosillo, emphasizing that citizen participation encourages and inspires everyone to continue transforming the city.

The proposals were ordered according to the number of votes received and were evaluated by public officials from the municipalities and by a panel of experts made up of an international network of collaborators from New York University. During these evaluations, the number of votes received, the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposal, its alignment to the 2030 United Nations Agenda, its impact, and its scalability were taken into account. Dr. Felipe Rey, one of the evaluators, highlights that many of the contributions were driven by empathy and solidarity, "a necessary recharge of inspiration for the participating cities."

In the case of Hermosillo, the first challenge involves solving the problem of mobility beyond car usage. The winners in this category were Omar Garza, Luisa Verdugo, and Marianna Longoria who presented the project Tactical Urbanism and ecobici stations in Hermosillo districts, which proposes eco-friendly bicycle stations, known as ecobici stations, in strategic areas in Colonia 5 de Mayo and its surrounding areas to promote various alternative methods of public transportation. The second challenge seeks to promote economic reactivation by fostering a more sustainable “circular economy”. In this category, the winner was Ximena Romo who proposed the project Itinerant Market, a mobile market which will allow many to get ahead financially. 

Reynosa touched on the issue of economic reactivation in order to stimulate the economy given the negative impact that COVID-19 had on the local economy and on the issue of prevention against Covid-19. For the first challenge, the winning proposal was Geographic System, presented by Marcos Olivares,  which proposes a way to improve the way addresses are used in the city. For the second challenge, the winning proposal was a local economic strengthening campaign that seeks a strategy to promote local consumption through advertising on websites and interactive maps, proposed by Roberto Cruz and Omar Guzmán.

San Nicolás de los Garza focused on improving air quality and finding ways to improve the quality of life for older adults. The winners of the first challenge, Juan Sandoval, Ana Laura Espinosa, and Gabriela Sanchez, accompanied by professor Gabriela Sanchez from the American School Foundation of Monterrey, AC, presented their proposal dubbed Natural Infrastructure that involves incorporating structures in communal areas consisting of plants that absorb pollutants. Andrea Gonzalez and Brenda Villarreal were the winners of the second challenge with the proposal Integration of the elderly population in art and cultural strategies. They suggested the development and implementation of public policies that address integrated art and culture strategies for the elderly.

Torreón promoted the return to the heart of the city and as a second challenge focused on promoting strategies to prevent more cases of COVID-19.  The winning proposal of the first challenge seeks to create parks that are a source of clean energy for the municipality. The proposal is called live on your sidewalk!  and was presented by Jesus Torres, Rosa Gutierrez, Francisco Martinez. The winners of the second challenge are Talia Romero, Aldo Valdés, Arturo Aranda, who proposed Responsible Health Establishments, which seeks to grant a symbolic citizen certification to establishments that have been authorized for reopening and that comply with health regulations. 

The municipality of San Pedro Garza García focused on conscious consumption to manage waste in a more efficient and sustainable way, and on finding solutions to close the educational digital gap exacerbated by COVID-19 in the most vulnerable areas. The municipalities had the option of choosing the two best evaluated proposals from the same challenge as winners. In this case, the two winners are from the conscious consumption challenge. The winning proposal ReciclAPP-Digitalization, Responsible Collection and Disposal of Waste digitizes, encourages, and simplifies the separation and collection of waste to bio-convert organic waste into high-value products and redirect inorganic waste to recycling. The proposal was presented by Gerardo Jimenez, Héctor Valente, Juan Arredondo, Carolina Rodriguez, Rogelio Najera, Amin Romero, Javier Soto, Rodrigo Diaz. The second winning proposal, SuperRecolecciónthat the SuperCiudad deserves, recommends three key actions to recycle and reduce the amount of waste. The proposal was authored by Professor Carlos Recordón, and the students Eugenio Lagunes, Emily Aimé, Patricio Oseguera, Marcelo Ramos, Fernando Hernández and Paulina Ramos Muñoz from a high school called PrepaTecSchool, Eugenio Garza Sada.

It is important to emphasize that San Pedro is pioneering the implementation of public participation programs. In 2016, the first City Challenge was held in San Pedro,  which was an initiative led by The GovLab in collaboration with the Municipality of San Pedro and Codeando México with the aim of implementing an open innovation pilot. The winning proposals of the City Challenge generated mobility solutions and were adopted as a public program that resulted in new policies and services to improve the lives of the residents of the municipality.

The winning proponents of the Multi-City Challenge Mexico 2020, in addition to receiving a certificate from The GovLab, will be participating in workshops led by experts from New York University together with public officials from their respective municipalities to develop their winning ideas into prototypes ready to be implemented. 

More and more governments around the world are using the experience of citizens to develop better policies and public services. The municipal governments of Hermosillo, Reynosa, San Nicolás, San Pedro, and Torreón are leading this movement in northern Mexico.