Participatory processes for risk communication: The CITIES platform

Contemporary scholarship highlights the limits of purely top-down approaches to risk
communication, particularly under conditions of uncertainty, vulnerability, and institutional mistrust,
and supports more dialogic and participatory models. This article presents the design and participatory
workflow of the CITIES platform, a digital environment that supports the co-production and
circulation of knowledge between citizens, institutions, and stakeholders. Three Italian pilot cities
(Enna, Macerata, and Bacoli) are used as case studies to assess a platform-based approach in order to
read urban “riskscapes”. Within this framework, the platform has been co-constructed by using a
mixed-method approach (combining document analysis, data gathered from online surveys, qualitative
interviews, and focus groups). The platform is discussed here as a civic infrastructure that can facilitate
structured exchange between communities and public institutions, with possible implications for
transparency, inclusion, and context-dependent transferability.