1. Resilient BOTU In Rotterdam, the Resilient Bospolder-Tussendijken 2028 initiative has been working with the local community since 2019 to leverage the energy transition as a means to build social cohesion and community capacity. The initiative applies the Asset Based Community Development approach and is working with local residents, informal social networks and bottom-up initiatives to (1) build an information and support network for the residents, (2) create technical capacity, local energy jobs and vocational training, and (3) address energy poverty and debt, and explore affordable energy options. 

2. Berlin Kiezblocks Similar to Living Streets, Berlin’s Kiezblocks are an initiative to limit traffic, improve road safety, and improve air quality at the neighbourhood level. However, they aim to establish both permanent and temporary spaces. They use participatory urban planning processes to divert traffic and plan, propose, and implement bike lanes and other communal spaces. They can be implemented by citizens, civil-society organizations, or governments.

3. Living Streets of Ghent Living Streets is a series of real-life experiments whereby residents can temporarily turn their street into a place where people feel comfortable spending time once there are fewer cars and more social interaction. These experiments also help local administrations to ensure that new neighbourhoods are always designed to have ‘living streets’.

4. Community Forest in Nepal, Social Equity in Community The use of Community Forests (CFs) to address social equity in forest management, namely in the distribution of benefits from the forest resources, good governance in decision making processes and the inclusion of marginalised groups. 

5. Wards Corner, London (Public-Commons Partnerships) Wards Corner uses PCP to establish a community-controlled asset to revitalise the surrounding area. PCPs are radical democratic models that encourages councils and other public bodies to work with communities to design, manage and expand the commons.   

6. Järva Dialog Järva Dialog, part of Stockholm City's Sustainable Järva initiative to improve energy efficiency of homes, enabled residents to have a say in deicision being made about renovations.   

7. BESTGRID (stakeholder involvement) BESTGRID was a project with the aim to improve public acceptance for grids on a local level and bring together stakeholders from civil society, academia and the energy sector to understand concerns of new electricity grids being built in communities. BESTGRID acted as an exchange of best practice approaches of transparent stakeholder participation in power grid planning. 

Methods:  

1. Collective Advisory Assemblies  Collective Advisory Assemblies (CAA) bring together communities affected by an issue, such as energy poverty, to receive ongoing support from activists and others affected by the same issue. It is a horizontal approach to participation, meaning that its focused is engaging affected communities engaging with each other. 

2. Energy Communities Energy communities refer to a wide range of collective energy actions that involve citizens’ participation in the energy system. They can be understood as a way to organise collective energy actions around open, democratic participation and governance, and the provision of benefits for the members or the local community. 

3. Natural Gas-Free Homes Residents go through several steps towards a natural gas-free home. We call this the customer journey to gas-free living. 

4. Public-Commons Partnership Public-Commons Partnerships are collective associations of state, community and private interests that manage and develop assets and investments in a local community, with that community’s interests and voice driving economic development. 

5. Tactical Urbanism Tactical urbanism is an approach to community engagement and place-making. Tactical urbanism projects are physical urban interventions that are often interim and pop-up in nature, to catalyze long-term change for more liveable streets and spaces. 

6. Civic Labs Civic labs is a method for bottom-up, local innovation that creates platforms wherein citizens together with other citizens, private and government stakeholders define common challenges and co-create solutions together. The application of civic labs is versatile and be initiated by governments, universities, non-profits, private companies, citizens or partnerships between stakeholders.

7. Living Labs A cycle of activities comprised of co-design, exploration, experimentation and evaluation that are repeated throughout the stages of an innovative process. They are in real-life environments based on user co-creation, placing citizens at the centre of innovation. Living Labs act as intermediaries among citizens, companies and government agencies.  

8. Citizens Asset Program Citizens Asset is the transfer of public assets’ use and management to non-profit collectives. Based on the logic that public things (municipal property) can become communal (citizen patrimony) through shared management. This is a reinvention of public properties which also provides tools and training to the communities responsible for the management. Citizen assets can be premises, buildings, facilities or public spaces.