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ICF Factor 04 / 06 · Engage
A city that listens
Listening without consequences is just a survey. Murcia went a step further: it turned residents' mandate into technical tender specifications, democratically safeguarding what had been agreed against any later political or technical change.
34.383
Active TuMurcia users
75 %
Monthly recurring use on Android
70.000
Residents validating the Conexión Sur process
100 %
Of the citizen mandate, completed or under tender
85,7 %
Of the population with effective access to the Geoportal
What Engage means
Participation only counts if it changes the tender specifications
For the Intelligent Community Forum, community engagement is what distinguishes a technology-enabled city from an Intelligent Community. Murcia had inherited a technocratic, top-down model: major infrastructure decisions were made from above, and the disconnect between technical solutions and the real needs of neighbourhoods generated public resistance and public spaces that failed to serve their purpose.
The response was a model of local, close-to-citizen governance built on three elements: an everyday mobile channel, a deliberative process with binding force, and open access to official mapping so anyone can make their case using the same data as the City Council.
Canal cotidiano
TuMurcia: geolocated reports, procedures and city data in a single interface.
Binding decisions
Conexión Sur and Conexión Oeste: urban co-design whose outcomes become part of the tender specifications.
Data to support informed debate
Geoportal: planning, risk and mobility data that anyone can view and download.
Cross-cutting layer
The use of artificial intelligence comes into play here in citizen services: the municipal 010 cognitive assistant is built into the app itself. It remains a capability that cuts across the Factors, not a separate Factor.
01 — The city in your pocket
TuMurcia, the transactional app
Launched in September 2024 to solve a specific problem: interactions with the City Council were spread across disconnected platforms and restricted to office hours. Version 10.0, rolled out in 2026, integrates the native e-Government portal and real-time city-data visualisation.
Your News · Your Events · Live · Your Procedures · Your Profile
Aviso ciudadano
From the incident-reporting module, a resident sends a geolocated photo of a streetlight, waste container or pavement. The report goes straight into the municipal operations platform, the responsible service updates its status, and the resident receives confirmation when the case is closed.
Transparencia
The Al Instante module opens up the data processed by CEUS: public-transport telemetry for mobility, and geolocated air-quality and pollen data for public health, designed to help vulnerable groups plan their day.
Procedures and culture
A gateway to the e-Government portal and Municipal Tax Agency, with live tracking of open case files. It also centralises the official events calendar to support culture and local commerce.
Accessibility
The app integrates NaviLens: people with visual or cognitive disabilities can scan urban markers and receive precise audio guidance in real time.
34.383
Active users in April 2026.
15.639
Of 20,193 Android downloads, active in the last 30 days: 75% recurring use.
64 %
Of iOS users already migrated to version 10.0, with frequent use of the integrated procedures.
460.000
Residents indirectly benefiting from optimised maintenance routes.
02 — Democracia deliberativa
Conexión Sur and Conexión Oeste
The railway undergrounding project released land in the heart of the city and triggered the largest participatory exercise in Murcia's history. Managed by the Open Government Office, it combines in-person deliberation with digital transparency.
Participation forums · residents and architects working with real plans
Marco vinculante 5+7
The consensus reached in the forums becomes a citizen mandate that serves as an unalterable roadmap for engineering teams. The decisive step was to incorporate that framework into the technical specifications of the tenders, so no subsequent political or technical change can strip it of substance.
Hybrid model
In-person deliberation in the Citizen Agoras is combined with the digital agility of TuMurcia. This allows older residents' experience and younger people's perspectives to coexist within the same representative process.
Public record of sessions
The murciaconexionsur.es website serves as both repository and public record of the process: 70,000 residents can verify every step with full transparency.
From residents' proposals to construction
Participation forum01
Participation forum
Residents, associations and professional bodies debate on site using the real technical plans, with no hierarchy between those who live in the neighbourhood and those who design it.
02
Citizen Agora
The format is adapted to each historic neighbourhood. Residents work side by side with municipal technicians and professional bodies such as COIARM.
03
Mandato 5+7
Consensus is formalised as a citizen mandate: a roadmap that engineering teams cannot alter on their own.
04
Tender specifications
The decisive step: the mandate enters the contract's technical specifications. From that point on, failing to honour it means breaching the tender requirements.
05
Obra ejecutada
In Conexión Sur, 100% of the citizen mandate has now either been delivered or is under tender, and compliance with its critical points has been certified across every awarded contract.
Conexión Sur · the benchmark
Conexión Oeste · the scale
“The result is not merely infrastructure that fulfils its technical purpose: it is infrastructure that reflects the identity and real needs of the people who live there.”
03 — The same maps used by the City Council
Municipal Geoportal
In production since 2023. Previously, each department had its own geographic information system on isolated servers and in incompatible formats: checking a plot's planning classification required a formal request, an in-person visit and weeks of waiting. The public information existed, but there was no practical way to read it.
Planning and risk
Civil protection layers
Seismic-risk areas, preferential-flow and flood zones, and full urban planning information for the city centre and outlying districts. What was once a dense document becomes a map that can be understood at a glance.
Mobility
Complete network topology
Cycle lanes, secure bicycle parking and public bike-hire points, cross-referenced with electric-vehicle charging points and regulated parking zones.
Territory and heritage
Dedicated map viewers
Residential rehabilitation and energy-efficiency areas, historic livestock routes and public parks, each with its own map viewer.
Open download
WMS and WFS
An open-access download centre allows companies, researchers and developers to obtain native vector and raster files to feed their own models and services.
Outward-facing
Residents consult the maps from their own phones, reducing in-person information requests at citizen-service offices. The Geoportal has become the preferred channel for reviewing planning regulations and mobility plans.
Inward-facing
External architects and engineers can self-serve queries on land classification or flood risk. This frees municipal technical staff from repetitive document handling and lets them focus on advanced technical validation.
Multiplier effect
Local companies and university research groups train predictive models using official information. This transfer of public data generates digital services that the City Council would not otherwise have needed to develop itself.
geoportal.murcia.es ↗
Stakeholders
Who makes this Factor possible
The Conexión Sur methodology was recognised in 2025 as a regional benchmark for good governance, certifying that 100% of the critical points in the 5+7 framework were respected in the tenders carried out.
Funding
Co-investment by three levels of government
Documentation and services
Go to source
Projects in this Factor
Related Factors and cases