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.