What is Participatory Budgeting?
Participatory Budgeting (PB) is a democratic process where community members can vote to directly decide how to spend part of a public budget. PB was first developed in Brazil in 1989 and is now used in over 7,500 cities around the world.
In Cambridge, PB aims to directly involve residents in the budgeting and city-building process, foster civic engagement and community spirit, and help ensure that the City’s budget reflects the priorities of Cambridge residents and local partners. Cambridge residents have allocated more than $10.5 million to 79 PB projects since 2014.
Cambridge launched its eleventh PB process in the fall of 2024. From September through October, community members submitted over 1,300 ideas for how to spend $1 million of the City's FY26 budget to improve Cambridge. From October 2024 through January 2025, over 70 volunteer Cambridge residents, who we call PB Delegates, volunteered to meet once a week to read, research, review, and develop those thousands of ideas into 20 tangible project proposals to improve the city. The PB11 Vote was open from March 6-16, 2025, and winning projects are now beginning their implementation process! Learn more about the past PB Cambridge cycles on our PB Cycles page.
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The 2024-2025 PB11 Cycle timeline.