How Citizen Partnerships co-produce projects with Yamato City in Japan

Introduction

The tsunami in 2011 showed the importance and capacity of community-led co-production in crisis-management and reconstruction in the affected areas in Japan. However, Japanese citizens are not only active as volunteers but increasingly also wish to have a say in the way public services are run. In order to respond to these social pressures many local councils have introduced “Citizen Partnerships”.

One of these is the “Citizen Partnership” in Yamato City (about 230,000 inhabitants) to the west of Tokyo. What makes this partnership special is that it gives citizens a role in commissioning, designing, delivering and assessing projects. This case study shows how Yamato City put the new co-production model into practice and how it developed over time, although the political leaders changed.