Progress in Citizen Engagement and Digital Participation: Contributions from the TU Delft Citizen Voice Initiative

This report documents the research and activities carried out by Citizen Voice between 2021 and 2025. The TU Delft Citizen Voice Initiative emerged in 2021 as a bottom-up research group to engage critically with issues at the intersection of participation, power, and technology, with an explicit aim to empower communities in urban planning and design through inclusive and meaningful participation and open data practices. The report starts by presenting the initiative, the team, and the journey so far. This is followed by an overview of the research projects developed until 2025 – ranging from qualitative studies to design and arts-based approaches, as well as community-based and transdisciplinary research. It then reflects on the impact achieved and concludes with a set of ethical guidelines that emerged from these experiences, which respond to particular ethical challenges of working with communities and digital platforms.