“Community review panels have the potential to transform the way we make decisions – but we need to do them more and do them better” writes Harriet Saddington in The Developer. “Imagine the benefits of listening to a room fill of diverse, demographically representative, local experts who have lived, walked and breathed your site.”

Frances Wright, head of Community Partnering at TOWN, was approached by The Developer to talk about the Ideas Exchange for Hartree.

TOWN and LandsecU+I on our joint project – Hartree in north east Cambridge – set up the Ideas Exchange: a panel using a model led by the Sortition Foundation – an organisation that promotes the use of citizens’ assemblies. 6,000 households in Cambridge were randomly selected and invited to join the panel. The 120 individuals who responded were asked to provide basic information (age, sex, gender, ethnicity). The Sortition Foundation’s algorithm then compared this selection to the area’s demographic and chose a representative 18 people – a microcosm of north Cambridge.

The Ideas Exchange has enabled the Hartree team to have early and long-term conversations with a group who do not have built-environment experience or need to voice the perspective of an organisation or stakeholder group; their expertise is in their lived experience of their local area.

The group has met seventeen times in 2022, both in-person and online, providing an informal setting for the design team to receive meaningful feedback on the proposals throughout the year, while the design is still evolving. The Ideas Exchange studied and provided feedback on the project vision, landscape design, sustainability strategy and proposals for transport and mobility for the scheme. The group has also met in person to visit the development site.