Stadtidee Aarau Participatory Budgeting
Helping the city of Aarau roll out its very first participatory budgeting program using the Method of Equal Shares to fund 17 local projects fairly!
In 2023, the city of Aarau launched its very first participatory budgeting program, Stadtidee Aarau, distributing a 50,000 CHF budget among 33 proposed projects.
The real-world setup was closely informed by preliminary results from our lab experiments. Working in close collaboration with Sebrina, Jasmin, and Lea from the city of Aarau, we planned every step of the implementation together — from how people would vote, to how the results would be communicated back to residents. The city decided to use a 10-point voting system and aggregate votes using the Method of Equal Shares (MES).
About 1,800 of Aarau’s 22,000 residents ended up casting their votes. To help voters understand what MES actually does, the city website explained how the algorithm works before voting opened. Afterward, it showed a breakdown of how the budget was divided across districts. The result: MES funded 17 projects spread across all districts, compared to just 7 (on average more expensive) projects that a standard “most votes wins” approach would have chosen.