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Citizens and urban stakeholders

On this page you can find the list of all NZC resources on citizen and urban stakeholder participation: 1) Quick-read, 2) Video, 3) An Introduction to the Need for a Participative Transition: Why It Matters and How It Can Be Done 4) Services & Tools, 5) Case Studies & Methods, 6) NZC Deliverables on citizen and urban stakeholder participation

 

 
 

 

3) An Introduction to the Need for a Participative Transition: Why It Matters and How It Can Be Done -

Democratic decision-making and agency are critical to achieve 100 climate-neutral cities in 2030 and a climate-neutral Europe in 2050. In this report, we make the case for cities to transform decision-making processes and engage citizens and urban stakeholders in meaningful participation to contribute towards this goal. Our aim is to challenge, inspire and support cities to reimagine the role of citizen engagement in their journeys to climate neutrality. Access the report here

 

4) SERVICES & TOOLS

We have designed several Tools & Services to support cities to become the first 100 cities to reach climate-neutrality by 2030. If you seek more information or are interested in support to use one of these tools, please reach out!

 

Engagement Strategy Tools

These tools aim to assist you in identifying your specific citizen and stakeholder engagement needs, and direct you towards the most suitable NetZeroCities services to improve your engagement processes. 

These tools include:  

  • Engagement Priority IdentifierThis diagnostic tool functions as a personalised health assessment for your city's engagement requirements. By answering straightforward questions, you'll pinpoint your highest engagement needs and identify the most pressing issues to address.  The tool will help you define your local engagement needs and identify which services you can use to start addressing those needs with the citizens and urban stakeholders in your city
  • Engagement Strategy Enhancer: While the Engagement Priority Identifier will help you identify priorities and specific services to use in response to each priority, this tool will help you navigate the best combination of engagement support tools, modules, and services available. It will help you to build on what you’ve already done or plan to do by finding additional, complementary services you can use to engage and activate the citizens and urban stakeholders in your city. For maximum impact, it will advise you on how to best use each tool in combination with others

You can access both tools here: https://netzerocities.app/engagementGuidanceTools

 

Engagement Building Blocks - https://netzerocities.app/resource-4093

En route to achieving climate neutrality, you will need to engage with citizens and urban stakeholders across your city. The Engagement Building Blocks offer a visual, collaborative, and playful way to learn and implement frameworks for designing such an engagement process. It can be used to explore alternative ways forward, assess needs, and reach agreement on key aspects between different stakeholders before you start the detailed design.

 

Civic Enviroment Mapping Service - canvases & guide collection - https://netzerocities.app/resource-3334

Mapping civic environments is the first step to visualize various individuals, groups and organizations, their roles, relationships, influence and impact on the city’s climate neutrality transition journey. This collection, provides a synthesized NZC Civic Engagement Mapping Tool and an additional range of curated mapping canvases which Transition Teams in the Mission Cities can implement in both physical and online workshop settings. These tools are delivered as a package with a 'Civic Engagement Mapping approach', which provides the guidebook to select, implement and mainstream mapping in city climate neutrality planning processes.

 

Strategies for Designing Spaces for Encounter - https://netzerocities.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Design-of-the-Spaces-for-Encounter-Framework-Guide-230803.pdf
Spaces for Encounter enable citizens and stakeholders with different types and levels of power to interact in carefully facilitated ways which can have a powerful effect on bridging divides and creating impact. They are spaces where citizens can encounter various stakeholders and be included in the transition to climate neutrality, both within the framework of the spaces and more broadly in the city’s work towards climate neutrality. This framework provides a way for thinking about the values and process of engagement that are needed in the spaces. It is not necessarily a step-by-step guide on how to create these spaces, but a guide on what you need to consider and possess to create Spaces for Encounter.

 

5) CASE STUDIES & METHODS

Citizen and urban stakeholder collection: BUILD A STRONG MANDATE - https://netzerocities.app/resource-2899  

The overarching process of Activating an inclusive ecosystem for change is at the heart of the Climate Transition Map approach, and is intended to expand and gain more momentum during each iteration (or turn through the Map). Building a strong mandate process with an inclusive activation of your local ecosystems is key to support and enable a strong Climate City Contract. To enable an activated inclusive ecosystem to be part of the mandate process means allowing a thin consensus around accelerated action to be reached, compromises to be made for the collective good and commitments for the Climate City Contract to be secured. This encourages and opens up pathways for radical collaborative action, transformative innovation(s), and joined up investment.

Resources: 

Find relevant Citizens and Urban Stakeholder Engagement and Participation Case Studies and Methods to support the “Build a Strong Mandate” process of the Climate Transition Map. 

 

Case Studies:     

  1. Climate Democracy Model in Amsterdam  The project focused on what is needed to achieve a decarbonised future in Amsterdam based on key principles of deeper and wider civic engagement for climate action, including collaboration amongst diverse actors, peer learning, and experimentation for new forms of governance.   

  1. Vision Workshop An innovative, inclusive workshop format, gathering Sztum's stakeholders, focusing on individual ideas about the Sztum future, related to the everyday life and environment of people taking part in the event to better understand the concept of climate neutrality and to co-create a common vision of Sztum in a climate-neutral future.

  1. Bridging Divides: Collaborating for Sustainable Development in São Paulo The work of a multi-stakeholder group to help progress sustainable development to create a better future in Sao Paolo’s North Zone.   

 

  

Methods:    

  1. Climate Democracy Model The Climate Democracy Model consists of practical, interconnected tools for a city or region to assess and analyse its progress towards climate resilience through democratic means, focusing on diversity of actors and knowledge, participatory culture, resourcing and competencies for climate democracy.    

  1. Energetic Municipality The energetic municipality helps municipal employees who have little time and/or resources to do so by providing concrete guidelines for involving residents and for creating internal support for this topic within the municipality.  

  1. Vision Workshop Toolbox The idea behind Vision Workshops is to bring together representatives of different groups (the general public, city administration, and/or schools) in their local context to make the concept of climate neutrality accessible to the population and to develop a shared vision for a future that is climate neutral.  

  1. Futures thinking Thinking is a broad umbrella of approaches that support people to think about, cope with, and imagine what is likely to happen, and what could happen, in the future.  

  1. Citizens’ Jury A citizens’ jury are tasked to address a topic/issue through deliberation and present their recommendations or decisions regarding the topic. Jurors are citizens selected through random stratified selection, to ensure representation of the affected community. The report is also available for the public to read. Citizens’ juries are advisory in nature, and work on a policy issue. 

  1. Oasis Game The Oasis Game is a community challenge for the realization of collective dreams. A group of players and a community make a dream come true by only using materials, resources and skills that are available in the community itself. It is a fast-paced and intense game that raises energy level and empowerment in the community. It was developed in Brasil and has been used in different contexts around the world.

 

Citizen and urban stakeholder collection: UNDERSTAND THE SYSTEM https://netzerocities.app/resource-2903  

The overarching process of Activating an inclusive ecosystem for change is at the heart of the Climate Transition Map approach, and is intended to expand and gain more momentum during each iteration (or turn through the Map). Understand the System process with an inclusive activation of your local ecosystems is key to support and enable a strong Climate City Contract.

To understand and make sense of the system in which a city operates, it requires a deep, holistic understanding of its context and social landscape. A city is a complex system made up of an entangled web of institutions, businesses, interest groups, citizens and communities that are connected in numerous ways. To grasp and better “understand the system” and to co-create the future scenarios of the city, it is important to gain a more comprehensive and deeper appreciation of the different, differing and diverse context in which the city operates, but most importantly, to include the voices and insights of a plurality of actors to reimagine it, even if it is not feasible to understand all the dynamic relationships operating in the city.

 

Resources: 

Find relevant Citizens and Urban Stakeholder Engagement and Participation Case Studies and Methods to support the “Understand the system” process of the Climate Transition Map. 

 

 

Case Studies: 

  1. Unified Citizen Engagement Approach The UCEA combines the perspectives of the three most prominent actors in the energy transition process: individual citizens, local initiatives/cooperatives and the municipality. The approach consists of five phases, on which tools and methods are mapped, that can facilitate the process and collaboration between the different actors. 

 

 

Methods: 

  1. Ecosystem Map The system map is a visual representation of the system of elements, actors and connections. It allows to take on a systemic view on an environment or a specific solution and see connections between the different actors that might otherwise not have been perceived. It also maps out the flow of materials, energy, information and money throughout the system. This allows the understanding where possible opportunities might lie to increase value, efficiency and/or efficacy. 

  1. Asset-based Community Development ABCD is a method which puts at the forefront, the development of a community’s assets and potentials in a sustainable manner. It involves building capacity and empowering individuals, associations and informal networks to come together and leverage their strengths to mobilise action in their communities. 

  1. Vision Workshop Toolbox The idea behind Vision Workshops is to bring together representatives of different groups (the general public, city administration, and/or schools) in their local context to make the concept of climate neutrality accessible to the population and to develop a shared vision for a future that is climate neutral.

  1. Challenge-based Systems Mapping Systems Practice helps make sense and bring about clarity of complex environments to make substantial social impact on a community or global scale. A method to push beyond the immediate problems to see the underlying patterns and how to learn and adapt the system to change. 

  1. Climate Fresk Online/face to face collaborative workshops to understand the implications of climate change and make action

 


Citizen and urban stakeholder collection: CO-CREATE THE PORTFOLIO - https://netzerocities.app/resource-2900   

The overarching process of Activating an inclusive ecosystem for change is at the heart of the Climate Transition Map approach, and is intended to expand and gain more momentum during each iteration (or turn through the Map). Co-create the portfolio process with an inclusive activation of your local ecosystems is key to support and enable a strong Climate City Contract.

It’s important to create and coordinate a comprehensive portfolio of actions with a range of connected interventions across multiple levers of change. And It’s of great importance to encourage and enable an inclusive activation of your local ecosystems (in its plurality) in the co-creation of the portfolios process. This will greatly impact the likelihood of success and sustainability of those climate-neutral transition portfolios.

Resources: 

Find relevant Citizens and Urban Stakeholder Engagement and Participation Case Studies and Methods to support the “Co-Create the Portfolio” process of the Climate Transition Map. 

 

Case Studies:  

  1. EmpowerMed The EmpowerMed project aims to address energy poverty in the Mediterranean region, by empowering affected communities, especially women, through engagement, support and policy recommendations.

  1. People’s Policy on Child Wellbeing The case was a collaborative and deliberative process in South Australia which trialled a citizen-led approach to policymaking. Instead of politicians designing policy and presenting it to the public for approval, this case turned that process on its head by supporting citizens to develop policy themselves.

  1. Landforce, Community wealth building Landforce is an organisation based in Pittsburgh, USA, that provides underserved community members training and employment in environmental work. It combines workforce development training with environmental stewardship employment. 

  1. TransformTO: Multisolving in Toronto A climate action strategy to reduce Toronto’s greenhouse gas emission by 80% by 2050 with the collaboration of experts and people living in Toronto.  

 

  

Methods:  

  1. Citizens’ Assembly A citizens’ assembly is a participatory process where a randomly selected group of citizens learn about and deliberate upon a specific issue or policy, and collectively come up with recommendations for decisionmakers.

  1. Co-production Co-production is a collaborative approach to decision-making and service design where providers, users and all relevant stakeholders work together to reach a collective outcome. The approach is value-driven and built on the principle that those who are affected by a service are best placed to help design it. In practice, it means that service beneficiaries are not only consulted, but are part of the conception, steering and management of services. 

  1. Futures Thinking Futures Thinking is a broad umbrella of approaches that support people to think about, cope with, and imagine what is likely to happen, and what could happen, in the future. 

  1. People’s Policy People’s Policy is a method of citizen-led policy development, designed to generate long-term solutions to complex problems in a non-partisan, collaborative way. 

  1. Community Wealth Building An economic development model that transform local economies based on communities having ownership and control of their assets. It aims to restructure the economy to make it more democratic.   

  1. Participatory Budgeting Participatory budgeting (PB) processes empower communities to make decisions on a city’s budget and spending. PB can be combined with deliberation to ensure a robust, inclusive process.  

 


Citizen and urban stakeholder collection TAKE ACTION - https://netzerocities.app/resource-2902   

The overarching process of Activating an inclusive ecosystem for change is at the heart of the Climate Transition Map approach, and is intended to expand and gain more momentum during each iteration (or turn through the Map). Take Action process with an inclusive activation of your local ecosystems is key to support and enable a strong Climate City Contract.

Leveraging top tier innovation, engineering, and technology systems is an advantageous but not sufficient approach to achieve systems transitions; Inclusive activation of the local ecosystem is necessary to enable a sustained and equitably impactful transition. The process by which a transition is carried and implemented- who is engaged when and with what degree of empowerment to affect the scope of the challenge and potential actions to tackle them, and when action should be taken - affects the outcomes of that transition.

 

Resources: 

Find relevant Citizens and Urban Stakeholder Engagement and Participation Case Studies and Methods to support the “Take Action” process of the Climate Transition Map. 

 

Case Studies:  

  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. 

  1. 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.

  1. 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’.

  1. 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. 

  1. 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.   

  1. 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.   

  1. 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. 

  1. 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. 

  1. 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. 

  2. 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. 

  1. 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. 

  1. 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.

  1. 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.  

  1. 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.


 

Citizen and urban stakeholder collection: LEARN AND REFLECT - https://netzerocities.app/resource-2905    

The overarching process of Activating an inclusive ecosystem for change is at the heart of the Climate Transition Map approach, and is intended to expand and gain more momentum during each iteration (or turn through the Map). Learn and Reflect process with an inclusive activation of your local ecosystems is key to support and enable a strong Climate City Contract.

To enable and facilitate the collective sense-making and cross-learning by an inclusive activation of the ecosystem for change can be an empowering force, as different individuals, organisations and communities can work together and collaborate radically. Well-connected individuals and communities can also build alliances, partnerships and can form larger and more powerful networks of impact.

Resources: 

Find relevant Citizens and Urban Stakeholder Engagement and Participation Case Studies and Methods to support the “Learn and Reflect” process of the Climate Transition Map. 

 

Case Studies:  

  1. Environmental monitoring committees in mining contexts An environmental monitoring committee based in Panama that works on water resources. The committee is made up of volunteers who help oversee the evaluation of water. The committee has helped the mining company take responsibility and change practices to reduce pollution of the water.

  

Methods:  

  1. Citizens Science Citizen science (CS) engages people in research and monitoring and helps expand peoples' knowledge of the subject. Citizen science is often used in studies of biodiversity and the environment, in which people voluntarily collect environmental data, monitor the samples and interpret the data.

  1. Transition Street Groups of friends and neighbours meet every few weeks with a practical workbook to make easy changes in how they use energy, water, food, packaging and transport. 


 

Citizen and urban stakeholder collection: MAKE IT THE NEW NORMAL - https://netzerocities.app/resource-2901

The overarching process of Activating an inclusive ecosystem for change is at the heart of the Climate Transition Map approach, and is intended to expand and gain more momentum during each iteration (or turn through the Map). Make it the new normal process with an inclusive activation of your local ecosystems is key to support and enable a strong Climate City Contract.

To make it the new normal can enable the creation of new infrastructures and embedded cultural practices that notably foster distributed leadership, nurture networks of radical collaboration and collective action. These new cultural embedded practices support the emergence of generative relationships based on trust, shared interest and shared accountability that supports the inclusive local ecosystem e.g. governments, civil servants, business, citizens and communities to come together to imagine and co-create a healthy, just and climate-neutral collective future.

 

Resources: 

Find relevant Citizens and Urban Stakeholder Engagement and Participation Case Studies and Methods to support the “Make it the New Normal” process of the Climate Transition Map. 

 

Case Studies:  

  1. Paris’ Standing Citizens' Assembly The permanent Paris Citizens' Assembly is the first full-scale institutionalisation of a representative public deliberation, and it's composed of 100 residents of Paris selected by civic lottery.

  1. CDMX’ Crowdsourced Constitution Through crowdsourcing, Mexico City granted a voice and autonomy to the citizens to generate a new constitution. Online petitions, surveys, kiosks, general assemblies and data collection centres served as spaces to acquire these opinions and recommendations. 

  1. Climate and energy model region An initiative to develop large-scale solutions for affordable and reliable energy systems in Austria while focusing on bottom-up approaches where regions develop their own ways of enhancing renewable energies. 

 

 

6) NZC Deliverables on citizen and urban stakeholder participation

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