Public Deliberation Forum on the Construction of Paju-si New City Hall Concludes

Designing the Future New Government Building Together with Citizens

Gyeonggi Paju City (Mayor Kim Kyung-il) announced on the 17th that it successfully concluded the public deliberation forum for the construction of the new city hall over three days?on the 7th, 8th, and 14th?with 110 citizen participants. This public deliberation was organized to gather diverse citizen opinions and build a new city hall that embodies Paju City's future vision.

Paju City successfully concluded the public deliberation forums on the construction of the new city hall over three days?on the 7th, 8th, and 14th?with the participation of 110 citizen panel members. Photo by Paju City

On the first day, discussions began about the new city hall for Paju City in the era of one million residents. On the second day, a deliberative discussion focused on the evaluation criteria for candidate sites, which was the main emphasis of this forum.

The evaluation criteria discussed were derived by Paju City through research projects and meetings of the Public Deliberation Committee to establish standards for the new city hall construction. These five criteria are ▲site suitability ▲reasonable economic feasibility ▲integrated accessibility ▲communication centrality ▲inclusive growth.

The citizen participants underwent a deliberative learning process by listening to detailed explanations from experts on each criterion, followed by discussions and Q&A sessions. Above all, discussion time was allocated to ensure that the citizen participants deliberated evenly across all criteria without bias toward any single one, allowing for balanced comparison.

On the third day, a field inspection of the candidate sites was conducted. After personally visiting the preliminary candidate sites, the citizen participants decided through discussion which evaluation criterion they considered most reasonable for the new city hall.

The citizen participants conducted a total of three votes?before and after deliberation, and after the field inspection?to observe changes in their preferences for the evaluation criteria throughout the public deliberation forum. Through this, citizens could directly experience the process of opinion changes among themselves and other participants. Notably, this citizen participation group included 10 youths, allowing the inclusion of opinions from the generation that will lead Paju City's future.

The ‘Paju City Hall Public Deliberation Task Force’ and the ‘Paju Public Deliberation Committee’ will compile a recommendation report based on the results of the three-day public deliberation forum and surveys, which will be submitted to the Mayor of Paju City. Based on this, Paju City plans to disclose citizens’ opinions and the results of the public deliberation through media reports by the end of December.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.