Data has traditionally been used as a tool of management and control.
In cities especially, data determines how things work, where intervention should happen and how impact should be measured. It feeds dashboards, targets and performance frameworks. Implicit in this approach is the belief that places can be defined, understood and improved through better measurement.
But cities do not behave like spreadsheets.
As Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift argue in Cities: Reimagining the Urban, the modern city cannot be fully conditioned. It is complex, messy and constantly evolving. Attempts to define it too rigidly produce friction, with the lived reality of place pushing back against abstraction.
Cities are organic. They are shaped by overlapping relationships, movements and histories. That complexity is not a flaw. It is what makes them vibrant.
This creates a tension. On one side are top-down systems seeking clarity and control. On the other is lived experience, relational, fluid and difficult to categorise. Rather than rejecting formal data, we need to complement it. We need approaches that treat communities not simply as subjects of measurement, but as active participants in defining what counts.
That is where participatory data governance begins.
From Transactional to Experiential
One way we have explored this is through Joy Diversion, an initiative encouraging people to map the places where they live, work and play in exploratory ways.
We often experience places transactionally. We pass through them. We consume services. We measure them in terms of efficiency or convenience.
By shifting towards experiential exploration, where we ask what a place feels like, sounds like and who uses it, we reshape our relationship with it. Experiences are owned. They create attachment and agency.
Mapping experience allows communities to articulate identity on their own terms rather than being defined solely through administrative boundaries or demographic categories. It opens up a richer conversation about what place means and how it is lived.
Even the word community deserves scrutiny. Policy often treats communities as fixed and place-based. In reality, people inhabit multiple, overlapping communities of interest, identity and practice. These affiliations are dynamic and intersectional. Participatory data collection makes that complexity visible rather than flattening it.
Designing With, Not For
In Stockport, we worked with Stockport Council, disability groups and older residents on a project called Mapping Mobility.
Town planners had sought to create inclusive spaces in the town centre. The intentions were positive, but unintended consequences emerged. A dropped kerb might exist on one side of a crossing but not the other. Tactile paving could support blind pedestrians while presenting difficulties for wheelchair users. Design decisions that appeared inclusive on paper sometimes felt unsafe in practice.
Inspired by the principle “nothing about us without us,” we worked with residents to document lived experience of navigating the town. This was not simply about collecting feedback. It was about recognising residents as experts in their own mobility.
Some recommendations were incorporated into regeneration planning. More importantly, the process shifted whose knowledge shaped decisions.
Community Safety Beyond Enforcement
In Chorlton, as part of Our Streets, we used similar participatory approaches to explore safety, active travel and school drop-off traffic.
Residents spoke about connection, maintenance and care. They wanted streets that felt looked after and places that felt safe to walk and cycle. We trained 50 local “data champions” to conduct traffic counts to Department for Transport standards, ensuring methodological rigour. Volunteers hosted traffic sensors in their homes, and we installed high-quality air quality monitors. Residents were invited to review and discuss the data together.
The act of collecting data proved as important as the results. When local people stand on street corners counting traffic, conversations start. Drivers ask questions. Neighbours engage. Data collection becomes performative. It reshapes relationships before analysis is complete.
The findings also complicated expectations. Traffic levels were not always significantly higher than comparable streets. In some cases, perceptions of danger were shaped by a small number of inconsiderate drivers. Air pollution patterns reflected multiple sources, including domestic wood-burning stoves, an inconvenient truth for some narratives.
Maintaining neutrality was critical. Credibility depends on openness to complexity, even when it disrupts advocacy positions. One driver told volunteers, “I trust what you collect, but I don’t trust what the council collects.” Because the data was gathered by neighbours, it carried legitimacy.
What Happens After the Counting Stops?
Participatory collection raises a fundamental question: what happens once the data is gathered?
Communities invest time, care and trust into generating evidence. That effort produces more than numbers. It produces shared understanding and often a sense of ownership. Yet too often, once analysed, data disappears into institutional systems, disconnected from those who created it.
If communities help generate data but have no meaningful say in how it is stored, shared or reused, participation risks becoming extractive. Governance becomes the missing piece.
Who owns the data? Who decides how it is used? Who benefits from it? Is it a short-term intervention or a long-term civic asset?
In projects addressing ongoing issues such as mobility, air quality or regeneration, these questions cannot be an afterthought. Participatory governance means designing stewardship mechanisms from the outset. It recognises that the infrastructure around data matters as much as the tools used to collect it.
Data Cooperatives and Civic Infrastructure
One response is the development of data cooperatives.
Rooted in traditions of mutual aid, cooperative principles emphasise democratic control, autonomy and shared benefit. Applying these ideas to data reframes it as a collective resource rather than a commodity.
A data cooperative provides a structure through which members can exercise collective stewardship. Decisions about access and reuse are made transparently. Responsibilities are clear. Benefits flow back to those who contribute.
Not every project requires a formal cooperative. Establishing one demands investment and may not be proportionate for short-term initiatives. However, the cooperative ethos is widely applicable. It encourages us to ask whether data can be held in common, whether decisions can be made collectively and whether value can circulate locally rather than being extracted.
In a digital era often characterised by enclosure, where data is centralised and monetised. Cooperative approaches offer a different trajectory. They rebalance power and create space for communities to engage institutions on more equal terms.
From Governance to Participation
Data governance can sound technical, but it is fundamentally about power and legitimacy.
Who defines what counts as evidence? Who frames the questions? Who determines how findings shape action?
Traditional models reinforce top-down authority. Participatory governance redistributes it. It involves communities not only in responding to data, but in shaping what is collected and why.
This requires accepting complexity. Cities are messy and dynamic. No dataset captures them fully. Participatory governance works with that uncertainty rather than attempting to eliminate it. It treats lived experience as complementary to quantitative rigour.
It also requires accountability. Communities should be able to trace how their contributions influence decisions. Without transparency, participation risks becoming symbolic.
Across our work, one insight recurs. People are not resistant to data itself. They are resistant to being excluded from how it is used. When communities generate evidence together, discuss it openly and retain agency over its future, data shifts from a mechanism of control to a tool for collective understanding.
In a time when institutional trust is fragile, that shift may be one of the most important contributions participatory governance can make.
This article is based on a talk Julian Tait gave at the Festival of Data. The talk was titled ‘Reframing data: Why we need more participatory governance’.