Community meeting

District 18 is a pioneer in Hungary with this initiative: it is currently the fifth settlement in the country and the first district in Budapest to organize a community meeting. The aim of the initiative is to allow residents of the district to participate in the discussion of community issues and the preparation of local decisions in a structured and transparent framework.

The community assembly is a prominent tool of participatory democracy, which creates an opportunity for the opinions, experiences and suggestions of the population to be directly reflected in the decision-making processes. The essence of the method is that residents selected by lottery work together in a diverse group representing the community, with the help of expert information and facilitated dialogue.

When selecting participants, we paid special attention to ensuring that the group reflects the composition of the district’s population in terms of gender, age group, and place of residence, so that the participants of the community meeting truly provide a representative picture of the people living in District 18.

The community meeting provides a space for district residents to directly contribute their experiences and opinions to shaping local decisions and the future of the community.

Community meetings in 2026

The 18th District is organizing the community meeting twice a year, in an unusual way, to ensure that as many residents as possible have the opportunity to participate. This year, we are paying special attention to involving the younger generation still living in the district.

Dates

Community Meeting
May 16–17, 2026

Community Meeting
anticipated October 3–4, 2026

Location

1184 Budapest, Üllői út 400.

Representative Board Meeting Room

Participation

The organizers would like to appreciate your participation: participants will be welcomed with a shopping voucher, a gift, and full board.

What happened in 2025?

The essence of InnoK’s work is that in urban development, numbers and people’s stories should together paint an authentic picture. In the 18th district, we are now putting this approach into practice: research data, residents’ experiences and community dialogue together form the basis for thinking about the future of the district.

What have we done so far?

Nearly 1,500 residents filled out our questionnaire, sharing their opinions on the district’s situation and future.
We organized focus group discussions in four city districts, where more than 50 participants shared their experiences and ideas.
After analyzing the collected data and opinions, we compiled a comprehensive set of proposals that outline the main topics for the community meetings.

This document became one of the foundations of the comprehensive development map of the district.

For us, urban research is not just about numbers, but also about residents actively shaping the future of their own environment. That is why we use a hybrid methodology in our research: we work by combining quantitative (based on data) and qualitative (based on experiences and stories) tools to get a more complete and authentic picture of the needs and opportunities of the district.

There was great interest in the community meetings: during the application process, nearly five hundred people indicated that they would be happy to participate in the process. From them, we selected the participants anonymously, in accordance with international methodologies.

During the selection process, we took into account the gender, age group and place of residence of the applicants, so that the participants of the community meeting would provide a truly representative picture of the entire population of the 18th district. This ensures that the diverse community of the district is represented in the discussions, and that the experiences and ideas shared reflect the voice of the locals as best as possible.

The community meeting is a process that strengthens participatory democracy, in which selected representatives of the population, with expert support, seek solutions to local issues through a joint learning and discussion process. Its aim is to strengthen trust, promote shared thinking, and formulate proposals that truly take into account the community’s perspectives.