Urban Arena Wiki - User contributions [en]

Governance and participation processes

2019-12-16T11:06:02Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise defining and addressing environmental problems as well as envisioning the future of cities, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

==General introduction to approach==
Governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasise diverse participants and roles in collective visioning and problem-solving efforts. Key driving questions include: "What do we want our city to be like in the future?" or "What are the challenges we face in building a more sustainable city, and how can we address them?" and "What information or knowledge do we have or need to help us in this process?". Such questions are explored and addressed through strategic and inclusive partnerships (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN] and [http://medium.com/toruscx/u-theory-the-methodology-that-seeks-to-emerge-the-new-7b18b227ff7b/ U-Theory] applications), participants collaborate to achieve concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/ INCONTEXT]), or catalysing and mainstreaming the reduction of carbon and energy consumption in urban settings (e.g., [https://drift.eur.nl/projects/music/ MUSIC]). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organisations) through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Governance and participation processes include approaches that assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to share their perspectives and contribute to the knowledge base upon which policies are formulated and decisions are made. Projects using these approaches can apply a number of different arrangements to engage people in both establishing the knowledge base for working toward sustainability goals as well the policymaking process itself. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed and shared, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ out of the town hall] approach, or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these ways engage participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>URBAN-NEXUS https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "out of the town hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance.<ref>Out of Town Hall Approach https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/</ref> Other approaches might include informal knowledge-sharing in intergenerational cafe discussions in Budapest, for example. Other more formal knowledge-building efforts include on-line courses on "how we transform our society" and teacher trainings that promote sustainability in schools. New approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.<ref>Wesely, Julia & Feiner, Georg & Omann, Ines & Schäpke, Niko. (2013). Transition management as an approach to deal with climate change. Conference Paper. Conference: Transformation in a Changing Climate, Oslo.</ref> <ref>Roorda, C., Wittmayer, J., Henneman, P, Steenbergen, F. van, Frantzeskaki, N., Loorbach, D., (2014)Transition management in the urban context: guidance manual. DRIFT, Erasmus University Rot- terdam, Rotterdam.</ref>

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/185532/factsheet/en/ SEiSMiC] “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”.<ref> SEiSMiC https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/185532/factsheet/en/</ref> The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en URBAN-NEXUS] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight”.<ref>URBAN-NEXUS https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. [http://itssoin.eu/the-project ITSSOIN], a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.” In assuring the transformative potential of participatory approaches to promote urban sustainability and justice, engagement must be sustained over time which is especially difficult when, for example, project funding runs out or the commitment to collaboration wavers.

==Illustration of approach==
Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to build understanding and, in the case of the [https://www.co-creation-network.org/ H2020 CO-CREATION project], to address disadvantage from the perspective of inclusion and participation in a way that is context-specific. Generally, co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actors in order to assert a common foundation upon which parties are considered equal, speak the same language and have shared a vision or goals. In 2019, CO-CREATION case studies are used to develop and test co-creation methodological approaches by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighbourhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.<ref>CO-CREATION https://www.co-creation-network.org/the-project/case-studies/</ref>

The project,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en/ URBANSELF], is about research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives to exchange knowledge and generate solutions to address urban challenges.<ref>URBANSELF https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/</ref> Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Governance and participation processes]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]
[[Category: ITSSOIN]]
[[Category: URBANSELF]]
[[Category: MUSIC]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-12-16T11:04:18Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise defining and addressing environmental problems as well as envisioning the future of cities, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

==General introduction to approach==
Governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasise diverse participants and roles in collective visioning and problem-solving efforts. Key driving questions include: "What do we want our city to be like in the future?" or "What are the challenges we face in building a more sustainable city, and how can we address them?" and "What information or knowledge do we have or need to help us in this process?". Such questions are explored and addressed through strategic and inclusive partnerships (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN] and [http://medium.com/toruscx/u-theory-the-methodology-that-seeks-to-emerge-the-new-7b18b227ff7b/ U-Theory] applications), participants collaborate to achieve concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/ INCONTEXT]), or catalysing and mainstreaming the reduction of carbon and energy consumption in urban settings (e.g., [https://drift.eur.nl/projects/music/ MUSIC]). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organisations) through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Governance and participation processes include approaches that assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to share their perspectives and contribute to the knowledge base upon which policies are formulated and decisions are made. Projects using these approaches can apply a number of different arrangements to engage people in both establishing the knowledge base for working toward sustainability goals as well the policymaking process itself. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed and shared, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ out of the town hall] approach, or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these ways engage participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>URBAN-NEXUS https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "out of the town hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance.<ref>Out of Town Hall Approach https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/</ref> Other approaches might include informal knowledge-sharing in intergenerational cafe discussions in Budapest, for example. Other more formal knowledge-building efforts include on-line courses on "how we transform our society" and teacher trainings that promote sustainability in schools. New approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.<ref>Wesely, Julia & Feiner, Georg & Omann, Ines & Schäpke, Niko. (2013). Transition management as an approach to deal with climate change. Conference Paper. Conference: Transformation in a Changing Climate, Oslo.</ref> <ref>Roorda, C., Wittmayer, J., Henneman, P, Steenbergen, F. van, Frantzeskaki, N., Loorbach, D., (2014)Transition management in the urban context: guidance manual. DRIFT, Erasmus University Rot- terdam, Rotterdam.</ref>

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/185532/factsheet/en/ SEiSMiC] “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”.<ref> SEiSMiC https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/185532/factsheet/en/</ref> The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en URBAN-NEXUS] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight”.<ref>URBAN-NEXUS https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. [http://itssoin.eu/the-project ITSSOIN], a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.” In assuring the transformative potential of participatory approaches to promote urban sustainability and justice, engagement must be sustained over time which is especially difficult when, for example, project funding runs out or commitment wavers.

==Illustration of approach==
Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to build understanding and, in the case of the [https://www.co-creation-network.org/ H2020 CO-CREATION project], to address disadvantage from the perspective of inclusion and participation in a way that is context-specific. Generally, co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actors in order to assert a common foundation upon which parties are considered equal, speak the same language and have shared a vision or goals. In 2019, CO-CREATION case studies are used to develop and test co-creation methodological approaches by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighbourhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.<ref>CO-CREATION https://www.co-creation-network.org/the-project/case-studies/</ref>

The project,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en/ URBANSELF], is about research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives to exchange knowledge and generate solutions to address urban challenges.<ref>URBANSELF https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/</ref> Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Governance and participation processes]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]
[[Category: ITSSOIN]]
[[Category: URBANSELF]]
[[Category: MUSIC]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-12-16T11:01:17Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise defining and addressing environmental problems as well as envisioning the future of cities, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

==General introduction to approach==
Governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasise diverse participants and roles in collective visioning and problem-solving efforts. Key driving questions include: "What do we want our city to be like in the future?" or "What are the challenges we face in building a more sustainable city, and how can we address them?" and "What information or knowledge do we have or need to help us in this process?". Such questions are explored and addressed through strategic and inclusive partnerships (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN] and [http://medium.com/toruscx/u-theory-the-methodology-that-seeks-to-emerge-the-new-7b18b227ff7b/ U-Theory] applications), participants collaborate to achieve concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/ INCONTEXT]), or catalysing and mainstreaming the reduction of carbon and energy consumption in urban settings (e.g., [https://drift.eur.nl/projects/music/ MUSIC]). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organisations) through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Governance and participation processes include approaches that assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to share their perspectives and contribute to the knowledge base upon which policies are formulated and decisions are made. Projects using these approaches can apply a number of different arrangements to engage people in both establishing the knowledge base for working toward sustainability goals as well the policymaking process itself. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed and shared, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ out of the town hall] approach, or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these ways engage participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>URBAN-NEXUS https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "out of the town hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance.<ref>Out of Town Hall Approach https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/</ref> Other approaches might include informal knowledge-sharing in intergenerational cafe discussions in Budapest, for example. Other more formal knowledge-building efforts include on-line courses on "how we transform our society" and teacher trainings that promote sustainability in schools. New approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.<ref>Wesely, Julia & Feiner, Georg & Omann, Ines & Schäpke, Niko. (2013). Transition management as an approach to deal with climate change. Conference Paper. Conference: Transformation in a Changing Climate, Oslo.</ref> <ref>Roorda, C., Wittmayer, J., Henneman, P, Steenbergen, F. van, Frantzeskaki, N., Loorbach, D., (2014)Transition management in the urban context: guidance manual. DRIFT, Erasmus University Rot- terdam, Rotterdam.</ref>

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/185532/factsheet/en/ SEiSMiC] “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”.<ref> SEiSMiC https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/185532/factsheet/en/</ref> The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en URBAN-NEXUS] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight”.<ref>URBAN-NEXUS https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. [http://itssoin.eu/the-project ITSSOIN], a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.” In assuring the transforming potential of participatory approaches to promote urban sustainability and justice, engagement must be sustained over time which is especially difficult when, for example, project funding runs out or commitment is wavering.

==Illustration of approach==
Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to build understanding and, in the case of the [https://www.co-creation-network.org/ H2020 CO-CREATION project], to address disadvantage from the perspective of inclusion and participation in a way that is context-specific. Generally, co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actors in order to assert a common foundation upon which parties are considered equal, speak the same language and have shared a vision or goals. In 2019, CO-CREATION case studies are used to develop and test co-creation methodological approaches by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighbourhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.<ref>CO-CREATION https://www.co-creation-network.org/the-project/case-studies/</ref>

The project,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en/ URBANSELF], is about research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives to exchange knowledge and generate solutions to address urban challenges.<ref>URBANSELF https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/</ref> Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Governance and participation processes]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]
[[Category: ITSSOIN]]
[[Category: URBANSELF]]
[[Category: MUSIC]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-12-16T10:45:09Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise defining and addressing environmental problems as well as envisioning the future of cities, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

==General introduction to approach==
Governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasise diverse participants and roles in collective visioning and problem-solving efforts. Key driving questions include: "What do we want our city to be like in the future?" or "What are the challenges we face in building a more sustainable city, and how can we address them?". Such questions are explored and addressed through strategic and inclusive partnerships (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN] and [http://https://medium.com/toruscx/u-theory-the-methodology-that-seeks-to-emerge-the-new-7b18b227ff7b/U-Theory] applications, participants collaborate to achieve concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/ INCONTEXT]), or catalysing and mainstreaming the reduction of carbon and energy consumption in urban settings (e.g., [https://drift.eur.nl/projects/music/ MUSIC]). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organisations) through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Governance and participation processes include approaches that assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to share their perspectives and contribute to the knowledge base upon which policies are formulated and decisions are made. Projects using these approaches can apply a number of different arrangements to engage people in both establishing the knowledge base for working toward sustainability goals as well the policymaking process itself. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed and shared, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ out of the town hall] approach, or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these ways engage participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>URBAN-NEXUS https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "out of the town hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance.<ref>Out of Town Hall Approach https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/</ref> These new approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.<ref>Wesely, Julia & Feiner, Georg & Omann, Ines & Schäpke, Niko. (2013). Transition management as an approach to deal with climate change. Conference Paper. Conference: Transformation in a Changing Climate, Oslo.</ref> <ref>Roorda, C., Wittmayer, J., Henneman, P, Steenbergen, F. van, Frantzeskaki, N., Loorbach, D., (2014)Transition management in the urban context: guidance manual. DRIFT, Erasmus University Rot- terdam, Rotterdam.</ref>

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/185532/factsheet/en/ SEiSMiC] “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”.<ref> SEiSMiC https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/185532/factsheet/en/</ref> The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en URBAN-NEXUS] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight”.<ref>URBAN-NEXUS https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. [http://itssoin.eu/the-project ITSSOIN], a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

==Illustration of approach==
Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to build understanding and, in the case of the [https://www.co-creation-network.org/ H2020 CO-CREATION project], to address disadvantage from the perspective of inclusion and participation in a way that is context-specific. Generally, co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actors in order to assert a common foundation upon which parties are considered equal, speak the same language and have shared a vision or goals. In 2019, CO-CREATION case studies are used to develop and test co-creation methodological approaches by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighbourhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.<ref>CO-CREATION https://www.co-creation-network.org/the-project/case-studies/</ref>

The project,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en/ URBANSELF], is about research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives to exchange knowledge and generate solutions to address urban challenges.<ref>URBANSELF https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/</ref> Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Governance and participation processes]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]
[[Category: ITSSOIN]]
[[Category: URBANSELF]]
[[Category: MUSIC]]

Talk:Democratic innovation through recognition

2019-11-04T19:55:34Z

Tamara Steger: Created page with "Can you share any examples of urban sustainability policy or decision making processes whereby poor or ethnically subordinated community members were engaged? If so, how was t..."

Can you share any examples of urban sustainability policy or decision making processes whereby poor or ethnically subordinated community members were engaged? If so, how was the process structured to assure their engagement? --[[User:Tamara]] 20:50, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Talk:Governance and participation processes

2019-11-04T19:46:31Z

Tamara Steger: Created page with "Can you share examples of innovative participatory processes that were shown to be effective in influencing policy outcomes? --User:Tamara Nov 4 2019 20:44 (UTC)"

Can you share examples of innovative participatory processes that were shown to be effective in influencing policy outcomes? --[[User:Tamara]] Nov 4 2019 20:44 (UTC)

Governance and participation processes

2019-11-04T19:36:37Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise environmental problem solving, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

==General introduction to approach==
Governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasise diverse participants and roles in collective problem-solving efforts. Through strategic partnerships (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN]), participants collaborate to achieve concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/ INCONTEXT]), or catalysing and mainstreaming the reduction of carbon and energy consumption in urban settings (e.g., [https://drift.eur.nl/projects/music/ MUSIC]). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organisations) through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Governance and participation processes include approaches that assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to share their perspectives and contribute to the knowledge base upon which policies are formulated and decisions are made. Projects using these approaches can apply a number of different arrangements to engage people in both establishing the knowledge base for working toward sustainability goals as well the policymaking process itself. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed and shared, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ out of the town hall] approach, or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these ways engage participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>URBAN-NEXUS https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "out of the town hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance.<ref>Out of Town Hall Approach https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/</ref> These new approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.<ref>Wesely, Julia & Feiner, Georg & Omann, Ines & Schäpke, Niko. (2013). Transition management as an approach to deal with climate change. Conference Paper. Conference: Transformation in a Changing Climate, Oslo.</ref> <ref>Roorda, C., Wittmayer, J., Henneman, P, Steenbergen, F. van, Frantzeskaki, N., Loorbach, D., (2014)Transition management in the urban context: guidance manual. DRIFT, Erasmus University Rot- terdam, Rotterdam.</ref>

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/185532/factsheet/en/ SEiSMiC] “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”.<ref> SEiSMiC https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/185532/factsheet/en/</ref> The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en URBAN-NEXUS] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight”.<ref>URBAN-NEXUS https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. [http://itssoin.eu/the-project ITSSOIN], a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

==Illustration of approach==
Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to build understanding and, in the case of the [https://www.co-creation-network.org/ H2020 CO-CREATION project], to address disadvantage from the perspective of inclusion and participation in a way that is context-specific. Generally, co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actors in order to assert a common foundation upon which parties are considered equal, speak the same language and have shared a vision or goals. In 2019, CO-CREATION case studies are used to develop and test co-creation methodological approaches by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighbourhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.<ref>CO-CREATION https://www.co-creation-network.org/the-project/case-studies/</ref>

The project,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en/ URBANSELF], is about research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives to exchange knowledge and generate solutions to address urban challenges.<ref>URBANSELF https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/</ref> Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-11-04T19:34:11Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise environmental problem solving, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

==General introduction to approach==
Governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasise diverse participants and roles in collective problem-solving efforts. Through strategic partnerships (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN]), participants collaborate to achieve concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/ INCONTEXT]), or catalysing and mainstreaming the reduction of carbon and energy consumption in urban settings (e.g., [https://drift.eur.nl/projects/music/ MUSIC]). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organizations)through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation, for example, can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Governance and participation processes include approaches that assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to share their perspectives and contribute to the knowledge base upon which policies are formulated and decisions are made. Projects using these approaches can apply a number of different arrangements to engage people in both establishing the knowledge base for working toward sustainability goals as well the policymaking process itself. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed and shared, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ out of the town hall] approach, or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these ways engage participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>URBAN-NEXUS https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "out of the town hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance.<ref>Out of Town Hall Approach https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/</ref> These new approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.<ref>Wesely, Julia & Feiner, Georg & Omann, Ines & Schäpke, Niko. (2013). Transition management as an approach to deal with climate change. Conference Paper. Conference: Transformation in a Changing Climate, Oslo.</ref> <ref>Roorda, C., Wittmayer, J., Henneman, P, Steenbergen, F. van, Frantzeskaki, N., Loorbach, D., (2014)Transition management in the urban context: guidance manual. DRIFT, Erasmus University Rot- terdam, Rotterdam.</ref>

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/185532/factsheet/en/ SEiSMiC] “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”.<ref> SEiSMiC https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/185532/factsheet/en/</ref> The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en URBAN-NEXUS] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight”.<ref>URBAN-NEXUS https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. [http://itssoin.eu/the-project ITSSOIN], a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

==Illustration of approach==
Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to build understanding and, in the case of the [https://www.co-creation-network.org/ H2020 CO-CREATION project], to address disadvantage from the perspective of inclusion and participation in a way that is context-specific. Generally, co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actors in order to assert a common foundation upon which parties are considered equal, speak the same language and have shared a vision or goals. In 2019, CO-CREATION case studies are used to develop and test co-creation methodological approaches by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighbourhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.<ref>CO-CREATION https://www.co-creation-network.org/the-project/case-studies/</ref>

The project,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en/ URBANSELF], is about research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives to exchange knowledge and generate solutions to address urban challenges.<ref>URBANSELF https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/</ref> Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]

Democratic innovation through recognition

2019-10-31T22:30:15Z

Tamara Steger:

Democratic innovation through recognition focuses on inclusivity in decision-making and policymaking processes. Diverse participants are convened in different and original ways in order to include multiple perspectives in urban sustainability efforts.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

==General introduction of approach==
Democratic innovation through recognition builds inclusivity in decision- and policy-making in the promotion of equality and justice in urban sustainability. It does so mainly in two ways: procedurally and methodologically with implications for equality. By directly engaging citizens in city budgeting processes (“participatory budgeting”) and in generating scientific knowledge (“civic science”), for example, diverse perspectives and experiences are drawn in from the start. An important aspect of democratic innovation, therefore, is recognition. In this context, roles traditionally assigned to experts and/or technocrats are transferred to citizens and diverse community members. Participatory and action research methodologies are often embedded in the approaches to democratic innovation that also invite citizens themselves to design and conduct meaningful research with the aim of improving the lives of subordinated or historically excluded groups (e.g.,[http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY], [http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE]), as well as confronting and transforming existing power dynamics (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/ TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY]). For example, the approaches taken in [http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY] and [http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE] projects draw important attention to garnering and integrating youth perspectives more in related political processes through forums of engagement that feed into the policymaking process. In this context, new perspectives emerge by tackling different issues ranging from restorative justice (see [http://www.alternativeproject.eu/ ALTERNATIVE]) to air quality (see [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE]).

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Democrative innovative approaches establish diverse participatory forums predominantly applied at a small scale in multiple settings. While some approaches (see [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/ TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY] and [http://www.alternativeproject.eu/ ALTERNATIVE] projects) are geared toward managing conflict and tensions inherent in democratic contexts, others emphasize procedural inclusivity with practical implications for establishing goals or agenda setting (e.g, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]), generating knowledge (e.g., [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE]), and producing various outcomes such as [http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/content/original/Book%20covers/Local%20PDFs/185%20Participatory%20budgeting%20in%20the%20Indische%20Buurt%202015.pdf/ budgetary plans for a local municipality]. The strength of these approaches, based on the examined projects, is found in the inclusive practical applications whereby disadvantaged, subordinated, or excluded people have the opportunity to participate in meaningful forums. While some of the forums produce concrete outputs, others are more about establishing cooperative civic relationships and networks. In many cases, however, it is not clear how the various approaches and their contributions endure once the project comes to an end. In some cases, experienced facilitators or conciliators are needed for transferability, particularly in the approaches that are directly focused on transforming conflict and power dynamics.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Urban, sustainability, and justice==
Small community contexts or large convenings of a particular group (e.g., youth) generally provide the platforms for exploring and testing democratic innovation. Hence, in urban contexts, the approaches may be considered a good fit for neighborhood-size processes/projects or for larger city-wide efforts depending on the approach. These approaches to democratic innovation address justice in different ways, but particularly touch upon procedural justice with potential implications for distributive justice (i.e., who gets what and why). Democratic innovation promotes recognition by working with subordinated groups or challenging power dynamics through recognition in a way that either directly impacts sustainability, as in the case of Citizen Observations (COs) - also known as civic science - or creates potential for more democratic sustainability measures by generating experiences that build on civic capacities and expectations.

==Narrative of change==
It is well known that policymaking tends to be driven by powerful special interests. Democratic innovation creates openings in the dynamics of policy-making that is often driven by special interests and lobbies and, as a result, tends to exclude certain social groups. Through a bundle of approaches that fall under the democratic innovation umbrella, formerly excluded perspectives and contributions can emerge and directly impact decision- and policy-making. The expectation, and proven potential of these approaches, is that through shifting the power dynamics that sustain exclusionary mechanisms within democratic polities, more just social outcomes will be achieved that will also help advance urban sustainability.

==Transformative potential==
The different approaches covered here each have an inherent aspect that builds the potential for change. They do this in several ways: 1) making inclusivity central to governance approaches 2) opening procedural opportunities in participatory processes and 3) engagement in a common endeavor that is about life satisfaction and quality, and 4) dealing with conflict/tensions or power dynamics. In particular, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/ TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY] project directly addresses power dynamics in which "misunderstandings and linguistic difference can become a starting point for a politics of translation that fosters a more inclusive and effective decision making, and strengthens social movements and local urban democracy in multilingual societies."<ref>TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/</ref> By opening up these opportunities and (political) spaces, transformation can occur as power dynamics and institutions are brought into question. As a result, not only the process but the very content of policy can be contested and rearticulated.

==Illustrations of approaches==

Democratic innovation approaches share a common methodology characterised by recognition in which particular segments of society take on new roles and are engaged in decision- or policy-making processes or forums that are traditionally predominated by others, such as experts (or adults). It is this aspect that makes them particularly innovative. Below are some examples of implemented approaches based on three different projects.

[http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE] developed “citizens’ observatories” to engage citizens in environmental monitoring and information gathering through Earth Observation applications. Citizens engaged in science for the purposes of addressing sustainability issues is an innovative approach that circumvents that idea that science is strictly the realm of experts. It recognizes that laypersons can also contribute in the process of garnering important knowledge as part of the process of making decisions and policies. Citizens’ observatories” (COs) were employed in the project [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE] to empower citizens to contribute to and participate in environmental governance, to enable them to support and influence community and societal priorities and associated decision making. In this process, a community-based environmental monitoring and information system using innovative and novel Earth Observation applications was developed, tested and demonstrated. In [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE], citizens gathered air quality data through sensors that provided real-time information on air quality in Barcelona, Belgrade, Edinburgh, Haifa, Ljubljana, Oslo, Ostrava, Vienna. The data was subsequently made available through widgets and mobile phone applications allowing people to comment and further share information. While there were some challenges in the project associated with, for example, data privacy, ethical and security issues, and scientific standards such as quality and reliability, the CO approach could increase awareness about environmental risks at minimal cost. Key aspects were identified as follows: “Based upon the review of different ongoing COs and of CO-related programmes in the environmental domain, we have identified key elements and qualities which are essential for a CO programme: (i) Be a unique virtual place to gather and share data from a variety of sources: novel sensor-technologies, open environmental data from public and national sources, and personal per- ceptions and textual/graphical contribution; and (ii) Extract and make use of relevant citizens-related data and provide multimodal services for citizens, communities and authorities.”<ref> Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’ observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance. Environmental Health 2014 13:107, pp. 10.</ref>

Recognizing the important role of young disadvantaged people in policymaking brings in new perspectives that promote equality and quality of life from the perspective of a formally excluded segment of society. The project [http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY] developed innovative ways for specifically enhancing the participation of disadvantaged youth in policymaking. This project established a forum for allowing young people to articulate their concerns and needs regarding quality of life issues that could be shared with stakeholders, politicians and non-governmental entities. The project specifically, “explores how young people aged 15-24 live in different European countries today; and examines what can be done to create social and institutional opportunities which will better enable them to live the lives they have reason to value” <ref>SocIEtY http://www.society-youth.eu//</ref>

[http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE], in a similar effort, also engaged disadvantaged and marginalized youth from major European cities in forums supported by socially innovative resources and technologies to assist policymakers across local, national and EU scales to address inequality.

==References==
<references />

[[Category: Clusters of approaches]]
[[Category: Approaches]]

Democratic innovation through recognition

2019-10-31T22:29:10Z

Tamara Steger:

Democratic innovation through recognition focuses on inclusivity in decision-making and policymaking processes. Diverse participants are convened in different and original ways in order to include multiple perspectives in urban sustainability efforts.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

==General introduction of approach==
Democratic innovation through recognition builds inclusivity in decision- and policy-making in the promotion of equality and justice in urban sustainability. It does so mainly in two ways: procedurally and methodologically with implications for equality. By directly engaging citizens in city budgeting processes (“participatory budgeting”) and in generating scientific knowledge (“civic science”), for example, diverse perspectives and experiences are drawn in from the start. An important aspect of democratic innovation, therefore, is recognition. In this context, roles traditionally assigned to experts and/or technocrats are transferred to citizens and diverse community members. Participatory and action research methodologies are often embedded in the approaches to democratic innovation that also invite citizens themselves to design and conduct meaningful research with the aim of improving the lives of subordinated or historically excluded groups (e.g.,[http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY], [http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE]), as well as confronting and transforming existing power dynamics (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/ TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY]). For example, the approaches taken in [http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY] and [http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE] projects draw important attention to garnering and integrating youth perspectives more in related political processes through forums of engagement that feed into the policymaking process. In this context, new perspectives emerge by tackling different issues ranging from restorative justice (see [http://www.alternativeproject.eu/ ALTERNATIVE]) to air quality (see [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE]).

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Democrative innovative approaches establish diverse participatory forums predominantly applied at a small scale in multiple settings. While some approaches (see [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/ TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY] and [http://www.alternativeproject.eu/ ALTERNATIVE] projects) are geared toward managing conflict and tensions inherent in democratic contexts, others emphasize procedural inclusivity with practical implications for establishing goals or agenda setting (e.g, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]), generating knowledge (e.g., [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE]), and producing various outcomes such as [http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/content/original/Book%20covers/Local%20PDFs/185%20Participatory%20budgeting%20in%20the%20Indische%20Buurt%202015.pdf/ budgetary plans for a local municipality]. The strength of these approaches, based on the examined projects, is found in the inclusive practical applications whereby disadvantaged, subordinated, or excluded people have the opportunity to participate in meaningful forums. While some of the forums produce concrete outputs, others are more about establishing cooperative civic relationships and networks. In many cases, however, it is not clear how the various approaches and their contributions endure once the project comes to an end. In some cases, experienced facilitators or conciliators are needed for transferability, particularly in the approaches that are directly focused on transforming conflict and power dynamics.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Urban, sustainability, and justice==
Small community contexts or large convenings of a particular group (e.g., youth) generally provide the platforms for exploring and testing democratic innovation. Hence, in urban contexts, the approaches may be considered a good fit for neighborhood-size processes/projects or for larger city-wide efforts depending on the approach. These approaches to democratic innovation address justice in different ways, but particularly touch upon procedural justice with potential implications for distributive justice (i.e., who gets what and why). Democratic innovation promotes recognition by working with subordinated groups or challenging power dynamics through recognition in a way that either directly impacts sustainability, as in the case of Citizen Observations (COs) - also known as civic science - or creates potential for more democratic sustainability measures by generating experiences that build on civic capacities and expectations.

==Narrative of change==
It is well known that policymaking tends to be driven by powerful special interests. Democratic innovation creates openings in the dynamics of policy-making that is often driven by special interests and lobbies and, as a result, tends to exclude certain social groups. Through a bundle of approaches that fall under the democratic innovation umbrella, formerly excluded perspectives and contributions can emerge and directly impact decision- and policy-making. The expectation, and proven potential of these approaches, is that through shifting the power dynamics that sustain exclusionary mechanisms within democratic polities, more just social outcomes will be achieved that will also help advance urban sustainability.

==Transformative potential==
The different approaches covered here each have an inherent aspect that builds the potential for change. They do this in several ways: 1) making inclusivity central to governance approaches 2) opening procedural opportunities in participatory processes and 3) engagement in a common endeavor that is about life satisfaction and quality, and 4) dealing with conflict/tensions or power dynamics. In particular, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/ TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY] project directly addresses power dynamics in which "misunderstandings and linguistic difference can become a starting point for a politics of translation that fosters a more inclusive and effective decision making, and strengthens social movements and local urban democracy in multilingual societies."<ref>TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/</ref> By opening up these opportunities and (political) spaces, transformation can occur as power dynamics and institutions are brought into question. As a result, not only the process but the very content of policy can be contested and rearticulated.

==Illustrations of approaches==

Democratic innovation approaches share a common methodology characterised by recognition in which particular segments of society take on new roles and are engaged in decision- or policy-making processes or forums that are traditionally predominated by others, such as experts (or adults). It is this aspect that makes them particularly innovative. Below are some examples of implemented approaches based on three different projects.

[http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE] developed “citizens’ observatories” to engage citizens in environmental monitoring and information gathering through Earth Observation applications. Citizens engaged in science for the purposes of addressing sustainability issues is an innovative approach that circumvents that idea that science is strictly the realm of experts. It recognizes that laypersons can also contribute in the process of garnering important knowledge as part of the process of making decisions and policies. Citizens’ observatories” (COs) were employed in the project [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE] to empower citizens to contribute to and participate in environmental governance, to enable them to support and influence community and societal priorities and associated decision making. In this process, a community-based environmental monitoring and information system using innovative and novel Earth Observation applications was developed, tested and demonstrated. In [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE], citizens gathered air quality data through sensors that provided real-time information on air quality in Barcelona, Belgrade, Edinburgh, Haifa, Ljubljana, Oslo, Ostrava, Vienna. The data was subsequently made available through widgets and mobile phone applications allowing people to comment and further share information. While there were some challenges in the project associated with, for example, data privacy, ethical and security issues, and scientific standards such as quality and reliability, the CO approach could increase awareness about environmental risks at minimal cost. Key aspects were identified as follows: “Based upon the review of different ongoing COs and of CO-related programmes in the environmental domain, we have identified key elements and qualities which are essential for a CO programme: (i) Be a unique virtual place to gather and share data from a variety of sources: novel sensor-technologies, open environmental data from public and national sources, and personal per- ceptions and textual/graphical contribution; and (ii) Extract and make use of relevant citizens-related data and provide multimodal services for citizens, communities and authorities.”<ref> Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’ observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance. Environmental Health 2014 13:107, pp. 10./</ref>

Recognizing the important role of young disadvantaged people in policymaking brings in new perspectives that promote equality and quality of life from the perspective of a formally excluded segment of society. The project [http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY] developed innovative ways for specifically enhancing the participation of disadvantaged youth in policymaking. This project established a forum for allowing young people to articulate their concerns and needs regarding quality of life issues that could be shared with stakeholders, politicians and non-governmental entities. The project specifically, “explores how young people aged 15-24 live in different European countries today; and examines what can be done to create social and institutional opportunities which will better enable them to live the lives they have reason to value” <ref>SocIEtY http://www.society-youth.eu//</ref>

[http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE], in a similar effort, also engaged disadvantaged and marginalized youth from major European cities in forums supported by socially innovative resources and technologies to assist policymakers across local, national and EU scales to address inequality.

==References==
<references />

[[Category: Clusters of approaches]]
[[Category: Approaches]]

Democratic innovation through recognition

2019-10-31T22:27:58Z

Tamara Steger:

Democratic innovation through recognition focuses on inclusivity in decision-making and policymaking processes. Diverse participants are convened in different and original ways in order to include multiple perspectives in urban sustainability efforts.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

==General introduction of approach==
Democratic innovation through recognition builds inclusivity in decision- and policy-making in the promotion of equality and justice in urban sustainability. It does so mainly in two ways: procedurally and methodologically with implications for equality. By directly engaging citizens in city budgeting processes (“participatory budgeting”) and in generating scientific knowledge (“civic science”), for example, diverse perspectives and experiences are drawn in from the start. An important aspect of democratic innovation, therefore, is recognition. In this context, roles traditionally assigned to experts and/or technocrats are transferred to citizens and diverse community members. Participatory and action research methodologies are often embedded in the approaches to democratic innovation that also invite citizens themselves to design and conduct meaningful research with the aim of improving the lives of subordinated or historically excluded groups (e.g.,[http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY], [http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE]), as well as confronting and transforming existing power dynamics (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/ TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY]). For example, the approaches taken in [http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY] and [http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE] projects draw important attention to garnering and integrating youth perspectives more in related political processes through forums of engagement that feed into the policymaking process. In this context, new perspectives emerge by tackling different issues ranging from restorative justice (see [http://www.alternativeproject.eu/ ALTERNATIVE]) to air quality (see [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE]).

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Democrative innovative approaches establish diverse participatory forums predominantly applied at a small scale in multiple settings. While some approaches (see [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/ TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY] and [http://www.alternativeproject.eu/ ALTERNATIVE] projects) are geared toward managing conflict and tensions inherent in democratic contexts, others emphasize procedural inclusivity with practical implications for establishing goals or agenda setting (e.g, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]), generating knowledge (e.g., [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE]), and producing various outcomes such as [http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/content/original/Book%20covers/Local%20PDFs/185%20Participatory%20budgeting%20in%20the%20Indische%20Buurt%202015.pdf/ budgetary plans for a local municipality]. The strength of these approaches, based on the examined projects, is found in the inclusive practical applications whereby disadvantaged, subordinated, or excluded people have the opportunity to participate in meaningful forums. While some of the forums produce concrete outputs, others are more about establishing cooperative civic relationships and networks. In many cases, however, it is not clear how the various approaches and their contributions endure once the project comes to an end. In some cases, experienced facilitators or conciliators are needed for transferability, particularly in the approaches that are directly focused on transforming conflict and power dynamics.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Urban, sustainability, and justice==
Small community contexts or large convenings of a particular group (e.g., youth) generally provide the platforms for exploring and testing democratic innovation. Hence, in urban contexts, the approaches may be considered a good fit for neighborhood-size processes/projects or for larger city-wide efforts depending on the approach. These approaches to democratic innovation address justice in different ways, but particularly touch upon procedural justice with potential implications for distributive justice (i.e., who gets what and why). Democratic innovation promotes recognition by working with subordinated groups or challenging power dynamics through recognition in a way that either directly impacts sustainability, as in the case of Citizen Observations (COs) - also known as civic science - or creates potential for more democratic sustainability measures by generating experiences that build on civic capacities and expectations.

==Narrative of change==
It is well known that policymaking tends to be driven by powerful special interests. Democratic innovation creates openings in the dynamics of policy-making that is often driven by special interests and lobbies and, as a result, tends to exclude certain social groups. Through a bundle of approaches that fall under the democratic innovation umbrella, formerly excluded perspectives and contributions can emerge and directly impact decision- and policy-making. The expectation, and proven potential of these approaches, is that through shifting the power dynamics that sustain exclusionary mechanisms within democratic polities, more just social outcomes will be achieved that will also help advance urban sustainability.

==Transformative potential==
The different approaches covered here each have an inherent aspect that builds the potential for change. They do this in several ways: 1) making inclusivity central to governance approaches 2) opening procedural opportunities in participatory processes and 3) engagement in a common endeavor that is about life satisfaction and quality, and 4) dealing with conflict/tensions or power dynamics. In particular, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/ TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY] project directly addresses power dynamics in which "misunderstandings and linguistic difference can become a starting point for a politics of translation that fosters a more inclusive and effective decision making, and strengthens social movements and local urban democracy in multilingual societies."<ref>TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/</ref> By opening up these opportunities and (political) spaces, transformation can occur as power dynamics and institutions are brought into question. As a result, not only the process but the very content of policy can be contested and rearticulated.

==Illustrations of approaches==

Democratic innovation approaches share a common methodology characterised by recognition in which particular segments of society take on new roles and are engaged in decision- or policy-making processes or forums that are traditionally predominated by others, such as experts (or adults). It is this aspect that makes them particularly innovative. Below are some examples of implemented approaches based on three different projects.

[http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE] developed “citizens’ observatories” to engage citizens in environmental monitoring and information gathering through Earth Observation applications. Citizens engaged in science for the purposes of addressing sustainability issues is an innovative approach that circumvents that idea that science is strictly the realm of experts. It recognizes that laypersons can also contribute in the process of garnering important knowledge as part of the process of making decisions and policies. Citizens’ observatories” (COs) were employed in the project [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE] to empower citizens to contribute to and participate in environmental governance, to enable them to support and influence community and societal priorities and associated decision making. In this process, a community-based environmental monitoring and information system using innovative and novel Earth Observation applications was developed, tested and demonstrated. In [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE], citizens gathered air quality data through sensors that provided real-time information on air quality in Barcelona, Belgrade, Edinburgh, Haifa, Ljubljana, Oslo, Ostrava, Vienna. The data was subsequently made available through widgets and mobile phone applications allowing people to comment and further share information. While there were some challenges in the project associated with, for example, data privacy, ethical and security issues, and scientific standards such as quality and reliability, the CO approach could increase awareness about environmental risks at minimal cost. Key aspects were identified as follows: “Based upon the review of different ongoing COs and of CO-related programmes in the environmental domain, we have identified key elements and qualities which are essential for a CO programme: (i) Be a unique virtual place to gather and share data from a variety of sources: novel sensor-technologies, open environmental data from public and national sources, and personal per- ceptions and textual/graphical contribution; and (ii) Extract and make use of relevant citizens-related data and provide multimodal services for citizens, communities and authorities.”<ref> Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’ observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance. Environmental Health 2014 13:107, pp. 10./</ref>

Recognizing the important role of young disadvantaged people in policymaking brings in new perspectives that promote equality and quality of life from the perspective of a formally excluded segment of society. The project [http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY] developed innovative ways for specifically enhancing the participation of disadvantaged youth in policymaking. This project established a forum for allowing young people to articulate their concerns and needs regarding quality of life issues that could be shared with stakeholders, politicians and non-governmental entities. The project specifically, “explores how young people aged 15-24 live in different European countries today; and examines what can be done to create social and institutional opportunities which will better enable them to live the lives they have reason to value” <ref> http://www.society-youth.eu//</ref>

[http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE], in a similar effort, also engaged disadvantaged and marginalized youth from major European cities in forums supported by socially innovative resources and technologies to assist policymakers across local, national and EU scales to address inequality.

==References==
<references />

[[Category: Clusters of approaches]]
[[Category: Approaches]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-10-31T22:26:06Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise environmental problem solving, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

==General introduction to approach==
Governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasise diverse participants and roles in collective problem-solving efforts. Through strategic partnerships (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN]), participants collaborate to achieve concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/ INCONTEXT]), or catalysing and mainstreaming the reduction of carbon and energy consumption in urban settings (e.g., [https://drift.eur.nl/projects/music/ MUSIC]). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organizations)through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation, for example, can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Governance and participation processes include approaches that assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to share their perspectives and contribute to the knowledge base upon which policies are formulated and decisions are made. Projects using these approaches can apply a number of different arrangements to engage people in both establishing the knowledge base for working toward sustainability goals as well the policymaking process itself. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed and shared, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ out of the town hall] approach, or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these ways engage participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>URBAN-NEXUS https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "out of the town hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance.<ref>Out of Town Hall Approach https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/</ref> These new approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.<ref>Wesely, Julia & Feiner, Georg & Omann, Ines & Schäpke, Niko. (2013). Transition management as an approach to deal with climate change. Conference Paper. Conference: Transformation in a Changing Climate, Oslo</ref> <ref>Roorda, C., Wittmayer, J., Henneman, P, Steenbergen, F. van, Frantzeskaki, N., Loorbach, D., (2014)Transition management in the urban context: guidance manual. DRIFT, Erasmus University Rot- terdam, Rotterdam.</ref>

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/185532/factsheet/en/ SEiSMiC] “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”.<ref> SEiSMiC https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/185532/factsheet/en/</ref> The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en URBAN-NEXUS] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight”.<ref>URBAN-NEXUS https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. [http://itssoin.eu/the-project ITSSOIN], a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

==Illustration of approach==
Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to build understanding and, in the case of the [https://www.co-creation-network.org/ H2020 CO-CREATION project], to address disadvantage from the perspective of inclusion and participation in a way that is context-specific. Generally, co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actors in order to assert a common foundation upon which parties are considered equal, speak the same language and have shared a vision or goals. In 2019, CO-CREATION case studies are used to develop and test co-creation methodological approaches by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighbourhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.<ref>CO-CREATION https://www.co-creation-network.org/the-project/case-studies/</ref>

The project,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en/ URBANSELF], is about research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives to exchange knowledge and generate solutions to address urban challenges.<ref>URBANSELF https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/</ref> Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-10-31T22:25:30Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise environmental problem solving, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

==General introduction to approach==
Governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasise diverse participants and roles in collective problem-solving efforts. Through strategic partnerships (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN]), participants collaborate to achieve concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/ INCONTEXT]), or catalysing and mainstreaming the reduction of carbon and energy consumption in urban settings (e.g., [https://drift.eur.nl/projects/music/ MUSIC]). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organizations)through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation, for example, can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Governance and participation processes include approaches that assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to share their perspectives and contribute to the knowledge base upon which policies are formulated and decisions are made. Projects using these approaches can apply a number of different arrangements to engage people in both establishing the knowledge base for working toward sustainability goals as well the policymaking process itself. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed and shared, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ out of the town hall] approach, or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these ways engage participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>URBAN-NEXUS https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "out of the town hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance.<ref>Out of Town Hall Approach https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/</ref> These new approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.<ref>Wesely, Julia & Feiner, Georg & Omann, Ines & Schäpke, Niko. (2013). Transition management as an approach to deal with climate change. Conference Paper. Conference: Transformation in a Changing Climate, Oslo/</ref> <ref>Roorda, C., Wittmayer, J., Henneman, P, Steenbergen, F. van, Frantzeskaki, N., Loorbach, D., (2014)Transition management in the urban context: guidance manual. DRIFT, Erasmus University Rot- terdam, Rotterdam./</ref>

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/185532/factsheet/en/ SEiSMiC] “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”.<ref> SEiSMiC https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/185532/factsheet/en/</ref> The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en URBAN-NEXUS] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight”.<ref>URBAN-NEXUS https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. [http://itssoin.eu/the-project ITSSOIN], a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

==Illustration of approach==
Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to build understanding and, in the case of the [https://www.co-creation-network.org/ H2020 CO-CREATION project], to address disadvantage from the perspective of inclusion and participation in a way that is context-specific. Generally, co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actors in order to assert a common foundation upon which parties are considered equal, speak the same language and have shared a vision or goals. In 2019, CO-CREATION case studies are used to develop and test co-creation methodological approaches by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighbourhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.<ref>CO-CREATION https://www.co-creation-network.org/the-project/case-studies/</ref>

The project,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en/ URBANSELF], is about research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives to exchange knowledge and generate solutions to address urban challenges.<ref>URBANSELF https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/</ref> Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-10-31T22:22:03Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise environmental problem solving, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

==General introduction to approach==
Governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasise diverse participants and roles in collective problem-solving efforts. Through strategic partnerships (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN]), participants collaborate to achieve concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/ INCONTEXT]), or catalysing and mainstreaming the reduction of carbon and energy consumption in urban settings (e.g., [https://drift.eur.nl/projects/music/ MUSIC]). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organizations)through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation, for example, can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Governance and participation processes include approaches that assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to share their perspectives and contribute to the knowledge base upon which policies are formulated and decisions are made. Projects using these approaches can apply a number of different arrangements to engage people in both establishing the knowledge base for working toward sustainability goals as well the policymaking process itself. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed and shared, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ out of the town hall] approach, or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these ways engage participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>URBAN-NEXUS https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "out of the town hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance.<ref>Out of Town Hall Approach https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/</ref> These new approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.<ref>Wesely, Julia & Feiner, Georg & Omann, Ines & Schäpke, Niko. (2013). Transition management as an approach to deal with climate change. Conference Paper. Conference: Transformation in a Changing Climate, Oslo/</ref>

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/185532/factsheet/en/ SEiSMiC] “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”.<ref> SEiSMiC https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/185532/factsheet/en/</ref> The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en URBAN-NEXUS] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight”.<ref>URBAN-NEXUS https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. [http://itssoin.eu/the-project ITSSOIN], a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

==Illustration of approach==
Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to build understanding and, in the case of the [https://www.co-creation-network.org/ H2020 CO-CREATION project], to address disadvantage from the perspective of inclusion and participation in a way that is context-specific. Generally, co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actors in order to assert a common foundation upon which parties are considered equal, speak the same language and have shared a vision or goals. In 2019, CO-CREATION case studies are used to develop and test co-creation methodological approaches by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighbourhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.<ref>CO-CREATION https://www.co-creation-network.org/the-project/case-studies/</ref>

The project,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en/ URBANSELF], is about research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives to exchange knowledge and generate solutions to address urban challenges.<ref>URBANSELF https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/</ref> Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-10-31T22:15:49Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise environmental problem solving, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

==General introduction to approach==
Governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasise diverse participants and roles in collective problem-solving efforts. Through strategic partnerships (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN]), participants collaborate to achieve concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/ INCONTEXT]), or catalysing and mainstreaming the reduction of carbon and energy consumption in urban settings (e.g., [https://drift.eur.nl/projects/music/ MUSIC]). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organizations)through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation, for example, can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Governance and participation processes include approaches that assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to share their perspectives and contribute to the knowledge base upon which policies are formulated and decisions are made. Projects using these approaches can apply a number of different arrangements to engage people in both establishing the knowledge base for working toward sustainability goals as well the policymaking process itself. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed and shared, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ out of the town hall] approach, or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these ways engage participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>URBAN-NEXUS https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "out of the town hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance.<ref>Out of Town Hall Approach https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/</ref> These new approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.<ref>Wesely, Julia & Feiner, Georg & Omann, Ines & Schäpke, Niko. (2013). Transition management as an approach to deal with climate change. Conference Paper. Conference: Transformation in a Changing Climate, Oslo/</ref>

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as SEiSMiC “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”. The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en URBAN-NEXUS] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight”.<ref>URBAN-NEXUS https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. [http://itssoin.eu/the-project ITSSOIN], a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

==Illustration of approach==
Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to build understanding and, in the case of the [https://www.co-creation-network.org/ H2020 CO-CREATION project], to address disadvantage from the perspective of inclusion and participation in a way that is context-specific. Generally, co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actors in order to assert a common foundation upon which parties are considered equal, speak the same language and have shared a vision or goals. In 2019, CO-CREATION case studies are used to develop and test co-creation methodological approaches by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighbourhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.<ref>CO-CREATION https://www.co-creation-network.org/the-project/case-studies/</ref>

The project,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en/ URBANSELF], is about research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives to exchange knowledge and generate solutions to address urban challenges.<ref>URBANSELF https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/</ref> Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-10-31T22:06:44Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise environmental problem solving, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

==General introduction to approach==
Governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasise diverse participants and roles in collective problem-solving efforts. Through strategic partnerships (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN]), participants collaborate to achieve concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/ INCONTEXT]), or catalysing and mainstreaming “carbon and energy reduction in urban policies, activities and the built environment” (e.g., MUSIC). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organizations)through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation, for example, can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Governance and participation processes include approaches that assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to share their perspectives and contribute to the knowledge base upon which policies are formulated and decisions are made. Projects using these approaches can apply a number of different arrangements to engage people in both establishing the knowledge base for working toward sustainability goals as well the policymaking process itself. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed and shared, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ out of the town hall] approach, or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these ways engage participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>URBAN-NEXUS https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "out of the town hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance.<ref>Out of Town Hall Approach https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/</ref> These new approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.<ref>Wesely, Julia & Feiner, Georg & Omann, Ines & Schäpke, Niko. (2013). Transition management as an approach to deal with climate change. Conference Paper. Conference: Transformation in a Changing Climate, Oslo/</ref>

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as SEiSMiC “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”. The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en URBAN-NEXUS] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight”.<ref>URBAN-NEXUS https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. [http://itssoin.eu/the-project ITSSOIN], a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

==Illustration of approach==
Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to build understanding and, in the case of the [https://www.co-creation-network.org/ H2020 CO-CREATION project], to address disadvantage from the perspective of inclusion and participation in a way that is context-specific. Generally, co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actors in order to assert a common foundation upon which parties are considered equal, speak the same language and have shared a vision or goals. In 2019, CO-CREATION case studies are used to develop and test co-creation methodological approaches by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighbourhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.<ref>CO-CREATION https://www.co-creation-network.org/the-project/case-studies/</ref>

The project,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en/ URBANSELF], is about research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives to exchange knowledge and generate solutions to address urban challenges.<ref>URBANSELF https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/</ref> Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-10-31T22:05:51Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise environmental problem solving, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

==General introduction to approach==
Governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasise diverse participants and roles in collective problem-solving efforts. Through strategic partnerships (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN]), participants collaborate to achieve concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/ INCONTEXT]), or catalysing and mainstreaming “carbon and energy reduction in urban policies, activities and the built environment” (e.g., MUSIC). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organizations)through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation, for example, can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Governance and participation processes include approaches that assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to share their perspectives and contribute to the knowledge base upon which policies are formulated and decisions are made. Projects using these approaches can apply a number of different arrangements to engage people in both establishing the knowledge base for working toward sustainability goals as well the policymaking process itself. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed and shared, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ out of the town hall] approach, or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these ways engage participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>URBAN-NEXUS https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "out of the town hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance.<ref>Out of Town Hall Approach https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/</ref> These new approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.<ref>Transition Management Wesely, Julia & Feiner, Georg & Omann, Ines & Schäpke, Niko. (2013). Transition management as an approach to deal with climate change. Conference Paper. Conference: Transformation in a Changing Climate, Oslo/</ref>

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as SEiSMiC “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”. The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en URBAN-NEXUS] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight”.<ref>URBAN-NEXUS https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. [http://itssoin.eu/the-project ITSSOIN], a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

==Illustration of approach==
Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to build understanding and, in the case of the [https://www.co-creation-network.org/ H2020 CO-CREATION project], to address disadvantage from the perspective of inclusion and participation in a way that is context-specific. Generally, co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actors in order to assert a common foundation upon which parties are considered equal, speak the same language and have shared a vision or goals. In 2019, CO-CREATION case studies are used to develop and test co-creation methodological approaches by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighbourhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.<ref>CO-CREATION https://www.co-creation-network.org/the-project/case-studies/</ref>

The project,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en/ URBANSELF], is about research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives to exchange knowledge and generate solutions to address urban challenges.<ref>URBANSELF https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/</ref> Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-10-31T22:04:31Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise environmental problem solving, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

[http://www.alternativeproject.eu/ ALTERNATIVE]
<ref> /</ref>

==General introduction to approach==
Governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasise diverse participants and roles in collective problem-solving efforts. Through strategic partnerships (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN]), participants collaborate to achieve concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/ INCONTEXT]), or catalysing and mainstreaming “carbon and energy reduction in urban policies, activities and the built environment” (e.g., MUSIC). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organizations)through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation, for example, can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Governance and participation processes include approaches that assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to share their perspectives and contribute to the knowledge base upon which policies are formulated and decisions are made. Projects using these approaches can apply a number of different arrangements to engage people in both establishing the knowledge base for working toward sustainability goals as well the policymaking process itself. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed and shared, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ out of the town hall] approach, or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these ways engage participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>URBAN-NEXUS https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "out of the town hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance.<ref>Out of Town Hall Approach https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/</ref> These new approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.<ref>Transition Management Wesely, Julia & Feiner, Georg & Omann, Ines & Schäpke, Niko. (2013). Transition management as an approach to deal with climate change. Conference Paper. Conference: Transformation in a Changing Climate, Oslo/</ref>

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as SEiSMiC “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”. The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en URBAN-NEXUS] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight”.<ref>URBAN-NEXUS https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. [http://itssoin.eu/the-project ITSSOIN], a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

==Illustration of approach==
Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to build understanding and, in the case of the [https://www.co-creation-network.org/ H2020 CO-CREATION project], to address disadvantage from the perspective of inclusion and participation in a way that is context-specific. Generally, co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actors in order to assert a common foundation upon which parties are considered equal, speak the same language and have shared a vision or goals. In 2019, CO-CREATION case studies are used to develop and test co-creation methodological approaches by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighbourhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.<ref> https://www.co-creation-network.org/the-project/case-studies/</ref>

The project,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en/ URBANSELF], is about research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives to exchange knowledge and generate solutions to address urban challenges.<ref>URBANSELF https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/</ref> Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-10-31T21:59:22Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise environmental problem solving, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

[http://www.alternativeproject.eu/ ALTERNATIVE]
<ref> /</ref>

==General introduction to approach==
Governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasise diverse participants and roles in collective problem-solving efforts. Through strategic partnerships (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN]), participants collaborate to achieve concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/ INCONTEXT]), or catalysing and mainstreaming “carbon and energy reduction in urban policies, activities and the built environment” (e.g., MUSIC). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organizations)through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation, for example, can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Governance and participation processes include approaches that assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to share their perspectives and contribute to the knowledge base upon which policies are formulated and decisions are made. Projects using these approaches can apply a number of different arrangements to engage people in both establishing the knowledge base for working toward sustainability goals as well the policymaking process itself. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed and shared, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ out of the town hall] approach, or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these ways engage participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>URBAN-NEXUS https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "out of the town hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance.<ref>Out of Town Hall Approach https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/</ref> These new approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.<ref>Transition Management Wesely, Julia & Feiner, Georg & Omann, Ines & Schäpke, Niko. (2013). Transition management as an approach to deal with climate change. Conference Paper. Conference: Transformation in a Changing Climate, Oslo/</ref>

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as SEiSMiC “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”. The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en URBAN-NEXUS] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight”.<ref> https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. [http://itssoin.eu/the-project ITSSOIN], a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

==Illustration of approach==
Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to build understanding and, in the case of the [https://www.co-creation-network.org/ H2020 CO-CREATION project], to address disadvantage from the perspective of inclusion and participation in a way that is context-specific. Generally, co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actors in order to assert a common foundation upon which parties are considered equal, speak the same language and have shared a vision or goals. In 2019, CO-CREATION case studies are used to develop and test co-creation methodological approaches by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighbourhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.<ref> https://www.co-creation-network.org/the-project/case-studies/</ref>

URBANSELF emphasises research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives to exchange knowledge and generate solutions to address urban challenges.<ref>https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/</ref> Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==
https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en)
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/results/en
https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-10-31T21:55:36Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise environmental problem solving, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

[http://www.alternativeproject.eu/ ALTERNATIVE]
<ref> /</ref>

==General introduction to approach==
Governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasise diverse participants and roles in collective problem-solving efforts. Through strategic partnerships (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN]), participants collaborate to achieve concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/ INCONTEXT]), or catalysing and mainstreaming “carbon and energy reduction in urban policies, activities and the built environment” (e.g., MUSIC). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organizations)through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation, for example, can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Governance and participation processes include approaches that assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to share their perspectives and contribute to the knowledge base upon which policies are formulated and decisions are made. Projects using these approaches can apply a number of different arrangements to engage people in both establishing the knowledge base for working toward sustainability goals as well the policymaking process itself. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed and shared, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ out of the town hall] approach, or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these ways engage participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>URBAN-NEXUS https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "out of the town hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance.<ref>https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/</ref> These new approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.<ref>Wesely, Julia & Feiner, Georg & Omann, Ines & Schäpke, Niko. (2013). Transition management as an approach to deal with climate change./</ref>

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as SEiSMiC “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”. The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en URBAN-NEXUS] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight”.<ref> https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. [http://itssoin.eu/the-project ITSSOIN], a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

==Illustration of approach==
Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to build understanding and, in the case of the [https://www.co-creation-network.org/ H2020 CO-CREATION project], to address disadvantage from the perspective of inclusion and participation in a way that is context-specific. Generally, co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actors in order to assert a common foundation upon which parties are considered equal, speak the same language and have shared a vision or goals. In 2019, CO-CREATION case studies are used to develop and test co-creation methodological approaches by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighbourhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.<ref> https://www.co-creation-network.org/the-project/case-studies/</ref>

URBANSELF emphasises research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives to exchange knowledge and generate solutions to address urban challenges.<ref>https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/</ref> Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==
https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en)
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/results/en
https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-10-31T21:54:12Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise environmental problem solving, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

[http://www.alternativeproject.eu/ ALTERNATIVE]
<ref> /</ref>

==General introduction to approach==
Governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasise diverse participants and roles in collective problem-solving efforts. Through strategic partnerships (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN]), participants collaborate to achieve concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/ INCONTEXT]), or catalysing and mainstreaming “carbon and energy reduction in urban policies, activities and the built environment” (e.g., MUSIC). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organizations)through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation, for example, can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Governance and participation processes include approaches that assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to share their perspectives and contribute to the knowledge base upon which policies are formulated and decisions are made. Projects using these approaches can apply a number of different arrangements to engage people in both establishing the knowledge base for working toward sustainability goals as well the policymaking process itself. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed and shared, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ out of the town hall] approach, or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these ways engage participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "out of the town hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance.<ref>https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/</ref> These new approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.<ref>Wesely, Julia & Feiner, Georg & Omann, Ines & Schäpke, Niko. (2013). Transition management as an approach to deal with climate change./</ref>

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as SEiSMiC “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”. The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en URBAN-NEXUS] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight”.<ref> https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. [http://itssoin.eu/the-project ITSSOIN], a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

==Illustration of approach==
Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to build understanding and, in the case of the [https://www.co-creation-network.org/ H2020 CO-CREATION project], to address disadvantage from the perspective of inclusion and participation in a way that is context-specific. Generally, co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actors in order to assert a common foundation upon which parties are considered equal, speak the same language and have shared a vision or goals. In 2019, CO-CREATION case studies are used to develop and test co-creation methodological approaches by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighbourhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.<ref> https://www.co-creation-network.org/the-project/case-studies/</ref>

URBANSELF emphasises research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives to exchange knowledge and generate solutions to address urban challenges.<ref>https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/</ref> Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==
https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en)
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/results/en
https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-10-31T21:47:22Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise environmental problem solving, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

[http://www.alternativeproject.eu/ ALTERNATIVE]
<ref> /</ref>

==General introduction to approach==
Governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasise diverse participants and roles in collective problem-solving efforts. Through strategic partnerships (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN]), participants collaborate to achieve concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/ INCONTEXT]), or catalysing and mainstreaming “carbon and energy reduction in urban policies, activities and the built environment” (e.g., MUSIC). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organizations)through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation, for example, can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Governance and participation processes include approaches that assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to share their perspectives and contribute to the knowledge base upon which policies are formulated and decisions are made. Projects using these approaches can apply a number of different arrangements to engage people in both establishing the knowledge base for working toward sustainability goals as well the policymaking process itself. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed and shared, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ out of the town hall] approach, or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these ways engage participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "out of the town hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance.<ref>https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/</ref> These new approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as SEiSMiC “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”. The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en URBAN-NEXUS] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight”.<ref> https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. [http://itssoin.eu/the-project ITSSOIN], a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

==Illustration of approach==
Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to build understanding and, in the case of the [https://www.co-creation-network.org/ H2020 CO-CREATION project], to address disadvantage from the perspective of inclusion and participation in a way that is context-specific. Generally, co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actors in order to assert a common foundation upon which parties are considered equal, speak the same language and have shared a vision or goals. In 2019, CO-CREATION case studies are used to develop and test co-creation methodological approaches by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighbourhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.<ref> https://www.co-creation-network.org/the-project/case-studies/</ref>

URBANSELF emphasises research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives to exchange knowledge and generate solutions to address urban challenges.<ref>https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/</ref> Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==
https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en)
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/results/en
https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-10-31T21:44:26Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise environmental problem solving, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

[http://www.alternativeproject.eu/ ALTERNATIVE]
<ref> /</ref>

==General introduction to approach==
Governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasise diverse participants and roles in collective problem-solving efforts. Through strategic partnerships (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN]), participants collaborate to achieve concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/ INCONTEXT]), or catalysing and mainstreaming “carbon and energy reduction in urban policies, activities and the built environment” (e.g., MUSIC). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organizations)through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation, for example, can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Governance and participation processes include approaches that assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to share their perspectives and contribute to the knowledge base upon which policies are formulated and decisions are made. Projects using these approaches can apply a number of different arrangements to engage people in both establishing the knowledge base for working toward sustainability goals as well the policymaking process itself. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed and shared, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ out of the town hall] approach, or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these ways engage participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "Out of Town Hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance. These new approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as SEiSMiC “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”. The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en URBAN-NEXUS] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight”.<ref> https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. [http://itssoin.eu/the-project ITSSOIN], a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

==Illustration of approach==

Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to build understanding and, in the case of the [https://www.co-creation-network.org/ H2020 CO-CREATION project], to address disadvantage from the perspective of inclusion and participation in a way that is context-specific. Generally, co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actors in order to assert a common foundation upon which parties are considered equal, speak the same language and have shared a vision or goals. In 2019, CO-CREATION case studies are used to develop and test co-creation methodological approaches by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighbourhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.<ref> https://www.co-creation-network.org/the-project/case-studies/</ref>

URBANSELF emphasises research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives to exchange knowledge and generate solutions to address urban challenges.<ref>https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/</ref> Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==
https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en)
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/results/en
https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-10-31T21:39:40Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise environmental problem solving, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

[http://www.alternativeproject.eu/ ALTERNATIVE]
<ref> /</ref>

==General introduction to approach==
Governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasise diverse participants and roles in collective problem-solving efforts. Through strategic partnerships (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN]), participants collaborate to achieve concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/ INCONTEXT]), or catalysing and mainstreaming “carbon and energy reduction in urban policies, activities and the built environment” (e.g., MUSIC). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organizations)through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation, for example, can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Governance and participation processes include approaches that assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to share their perspectives and contribute to the knowledge base upon which policies are formulated and decisions are made. Projects using these approaches can apply a number of different arrangements to engage people in both establishing the knowledge base for working toward sustainability goals as well the policymaking process itself. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed and shared, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ out of the town hall] approach, or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these ways engage participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "Out of Town Hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance. These new approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as SEiSMiC “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”. The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en URBAN-NEXUS] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight”.<ref> https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. [http://itssoin.eu/the-project ITSSOIN], a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

==Illustration of approach==

Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to build understanding and, in the case of the [https://www.co-creation-network.org/ H2020 CO-CREATION project], to address disadvantage from the perspective of inclusion and participation in a way that is context-specific. Generally, co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actors in order to assert a common foundation upon which parties are considered equal, speak the same language and have shared a vision or goals. In 2019, CO-CREATION case studies are used to develop and test co-creation methodological approaches by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighbourhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.<ref> https://www.co-creation-network.org/the-project/case-studies/</ref>

[https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/ URBANSELF] emphasizes research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives in urban sustainability by exchanging knowledge and solutions to address urban challenges. Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==
https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en)
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/results/en
https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-10-31T21:35:47Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise environmental problem solving, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

[http://www.alternativeproject.eu/ ALTERNATIVE]
<ref> /</ref>

==General introduction to approach==
Governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasise diverse participants and roles in collective problem-solving efforts. Through strategic partnerships (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN]), participants collaborate to achieve concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/ INCONTEXT]), or catalysing and mainstreaming “carbon and energy reduction in urban policies, activities and the built environment” (e.g., MUSIC). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organizations)through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation, for example, can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Governance and participation processes include approaches that assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to share their perspectives and contribute to the knowledge base upon which policies are formulated and decisions are made. Projects using these approaches can apply a number of different arrangements to engage people in both establishing the knowledge base for working toward sustainability goals as well the policymaking process itself. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed and shared, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ out of the town hall] approach, or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these ways engage participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "Out of Town Hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance. These new approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as SEiSMiC “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”. The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en URBAN-NEXUS] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight”.<ref> https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. [http://itssoin.eu/the-project ITSSOIN], a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

==Illustration of approach==

Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to build understanding and, in the case of the H2020 CO-CREATION project, to address disadvantage in a way that is context-specific. Generally, co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actors in order to assert a common foundation upon which parties are considered equal, speak the same language and have shared a vision or goals. In 2019, CO-CREATION case studies are used to develop and test co-creation methodological approaches by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighbourhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.

[https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/ URBANSELF] emphasizes research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives in urban sustainability by exchanging knowledge and solutions to address urban challenges. Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==
https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en)
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/results/en
https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-10-31T21:27:14Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise environmental problem solving, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

[http://www.alternativeproject.eu/ ALTERNATIVE]
<ref> /</ref>

==General introduction to approach==
Governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasise diverse participants and roles in collective problem-solving efforts. Through strategic partnerships (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN]), participants collaborate to achieve concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/ INCONTEXT]), or catalysing and mainstreaming “carbon and energy reduction in urban policies, activities and the built environment” (e.g., MUSIC). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organizations)through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation, for example, can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Governance and participation processes include approaches that assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to share their perspectives and contribute to the knowledge base upon which policies are formulated and decisions are made. Projects using these approaches can apply a number of different arrangements to engage people in both establishing the knowledge base for working toward sustainability goals as well the policymaking process itself. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed and shared, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ out of the town hall] approach, or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these ways engage participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "Out of Town Hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance. These new approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as SEiSMiC “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”. The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en URBAN-NEXUS] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight”.<ref> https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. [http://itssoin.eu/the-project ITSSOIN], a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

==Illustration of approach==

Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to co-create understanding and, in the case of H2020 CO-CREATION project, to address disadvantage in particular. The methodology based on the H2020 CO-CREATION is not yet developed and will be project specific. However, generally co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actor perspectives in order to assert a common foundation in which parties are equal (with equal resources), speak the same language and have shared vision/goals. CO-CREATION is in progress and in 2019, case studies involving the application of the developed co-creation methodology will be launched by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighborhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.

[https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/ URBANSELF] emphasizes research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives in urban sustainability by exchanging knowledge and solutions to address urban challenges. Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==
https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en)
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/results/en
https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-10-31T21:24:26Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise environmental problem solving, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

[http://www.alternativeproject.eu/ ALTERNATIVE]
<ref> /</ref>

==General introduction to approach==
Governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasise diverse participants and roles in collective problem-solving efforts. Through strategic partnerships (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN]), participants collaborate to achieve concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/ INCONTEXT]), or catalysing and mainstreaming “carbon and energy reduction in urban policies, activities and the built environment” (e.g., MUSIC). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organizations)through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation, for example, can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Governance and participation processes include approaches that assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to share their perspectives and contribute to the knowledge base upon which policies are formulated and decisions are made. Projects using these approaches can apply a number of different arrangements to engage people in both establishing the knowledge base for working toward sustainability goals as well the policymaking process itself. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed and shared, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ out of the town hall] approach, or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these ways engage participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "Out of Town Hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance. These new approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as SEiSMiC “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”. The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight”. <ref> https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. [http://itssoin.eu/the-project ITSSOIN], a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

==Illustration of approach==

Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to co-create understanding and, in the case of H2020 CO-CREATION project, to address disadvantage in particular. The methodology based on the H2020 CO-CREATION is not yet developed and will be project specific. However, generally co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actor perspectives in order to assert a common foundation in which parties are equal (with equal resources), speak the same language and have shared vision/goals. CO-CREATION is in progress and in 2019, case studies involving the application of the developed co-creation methodology will be launched by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighborhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.

[https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/ URBANSELF] emphasizes research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives in urban sustainability by exchanging knowledge and solutions to address urban challenges. Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==
https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en)
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/results/en
https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-10-31T21:21:05Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise environmental problem solving, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

[http://www.alternativeproject.eu/ ALTERNATIVE]
<ref> /</ref>

==General introduction to approach==
Governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasise diverse participants and roles in collective problem-solving efforts. Through strategic partnerships (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN]), participants collaborate to achieve concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/ INCONTEXT]), or catalysing and mainstreaming “carbon and energy reduction in urban policies, activities and the built environment” (e.g., MUSIC). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organizations)through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation, for example, can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Governance and participation processes include approaches that assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to share their perspectives and contribute to the knowledge base upon which policies are formulated and decisions are made. Projects using these approaches can apply a number of different arrangements to engage people in both establishing the knowledge base for working toward sustainability goals as well the policymaking process itself. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed and shared, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ out of the town hall] approach, or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these ways engage participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "Out of Town Hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance. These new approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as SEiSMiC “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”. The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight” Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. [http://itssoin.eu/the-project ITSSOIN], a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

==Illustration of approach==

Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to co-create understanding and, in the case of H2020 CO-CREATION project, to address disadvantage in particular. The methodology based on the H2020 CO-CREATION is not yet developed and will be project specific. However, generally co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actor perspectives in order to assert a common foundation in which parties are equal (with equal resources), speak the same language and have shared vision/goals. CO-CREATION is in progress and in 2019, case studies involving the application of the developed co-creation methodology will be launched by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighborhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.

[https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/ URBANSELF] emphasizes research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives in urban sustainability by exchanging knowledge and solutions to address urban challenges. Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==
https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en)
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/results/en
https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-10-31T21:01:14Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise environmental problem solving, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

[http://www.alternativeproject.eu/ ALTERNATIVE]
<ref> /</ref>

==General introduction to approach==
Approaches to governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasize diverse participants and roles in collective problem-solving efforts. Through “strategic partnerships” (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN]), participants work toward achieving concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/ INCONTEXT]), or catalysing and mainstreaming “carbon and energy reduction in urban policies, activities and the built environment” (e.g., MUSIC). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organizations)through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation, for example, can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
While the approaches can vary, they assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to build and share knowledge and perspectives in their efforts to work toward sustainability goals. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ out of the town hall] approach, or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these ways engage participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "Out of Town Hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance. These new approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as SEiSMiC “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”. The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight” Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. [http://itssoin.eu/the-project ITSSOIN], a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

==Illustration of approach==

Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to co-create understanding and, in the case of H2020 CO-CREATION project, to address disadvantage in particular. The methodology based on the H2020 CO-CREATION is not yet developed and will be project specific. However, generally co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actor perspectives in order to assert a common foundation in which parties are equal (with equal resources), speak the same language and have shared vision/goals. CO-CREATION is in progress and in 2019, case studies involving the application of the developed co-creation methodology will be launched by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighborhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.

[https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/ URBANSELF] emphasizes research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives in urban sustainability by exchanging knowledge and solutions to address urban challenges. Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==
https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en)
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/results/en
https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-10-31T20:50:34Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise environmental problem solving, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

[http://www.alternativeproject.eu/ ALTERNATIVE]
<ref> /</ref>

==General introduction to approach==
Approaches to governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasize diverse participants and roles in collective problem-solving efforts. Through “strategic partnerships” (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN]), participants work toward achieving concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/ INCONTEXT]), or catalysing and mainstreaming “carbon and energy reduction in urban policies, activities and the built environment” (e.g., MUSIC). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organizations)through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation, for example, can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
While the approaches can vary, they assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to build and share knowledge and perspectives in their efforts to work toward sustainability goals. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ Out of the Town Hall] approach, or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these forums provide arrangements for for engaging participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "Out of Town Hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance. These new approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as SEiSMiC “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”. The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight” Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN], a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

==Illustration of approach==

Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to co-create understanding and, in the case of H2020 CO-CREATION project, to address disadvantage in particular. The methodology based on the H2020 CO-CREATION is not yet developed and will be project specific. However, generally co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actor perspectives in order to assert a common foundation in which parties are equal (with equal resources), speak the same language and have shared vision/goals. CO-CREATION is in progress and in 2019, case studies involving the application of the developed co-creation methodology will be launched by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighborhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.

[https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/ URBANSELF] emphasizes research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives in urban sustainability by exchanging knowledge and solutions to address urban challenges. Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==
https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en)
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/results/en
https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-10-31T20:49:54Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise environmental problem solving, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

[http://www.alternativeproject.eu/ ALTERNATIVE]
<ref> /</ref>

==General introduction to approach==
Approaches to governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasize diverse participants and roles in collective problem-solving efforts. Through “strategic partnerships” (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN]), participants work toward achieving concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/ INCONTEXT]), or catalysing and mainstreaming “carbon and energy reduction in urban policies, activities and the built environment” (e.g., MUSIC). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organizations)through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation, for example, can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
While the approaches can vary, they assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to build and share knowledge and perspectives in their efforts to work toward sustainability goals. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ "Out of the Town Hall] approach, or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these forums provide arrangements for for engaging participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "Out of Town Hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance. These new approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as SEiSMiC “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”. The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight” Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN], a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

==Illustration of approach==

Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to co-create understanding and, in the case of H2020 CO-CREATION project, to address disadvantage in particular. The methodology based on the H2020 CO-CREATION is not yet developed and will be project specific. However, generally co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actor perspectives in order to assert a common foundation in which parties are equal (with equal resources), speak the same language and have shared vision/goals. CO-CREATION is in progress and in 2019, case studies involving the application of the developed co-creation methodology will be launched by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighborhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.

[https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/ URBANSELF] emphasizes research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives in urban sustainability by exchanging knowledge and solutions to address urban challenges. Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==
https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en)
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/results/en
https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-10-31T20:46:29Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise environmental problem solving, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

[http://www.alternativeproject.eu/ ALTERNATIVE]
<ref> /</ref>

==General introduction to approach==
Approaches to governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasize diverse participants and roles in collective problem-solving efforts. Through “strategic partnerships” (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN]), participants work toward achieving concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/ INCONTEXT]), or catalysing and mainstreaming “carbon and energy reduction in urban policies, activities and the built environment” (e.g., MUSIC). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organizations)through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation, for example, can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
While the approaches can vary, they assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to build and share knowledge and perspectives in their efforts to work toward sustainability goals. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ out of town hall] approach, or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these forums provide arrangements for for engaging participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "Out of Town Hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance. These new approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as SEiSMiC “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”. The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight” Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN], a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

==Illustration of approach==

Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to co-create understanding and, in the case of H2020 CO-CREATION project, to address disadvantage in particular. The methodology based on the H2020 CO-CREATION is not yet developed and will be project specific. However, generally co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actor perspectives in order to assert a common foundation in which parties are equal (with equal resources), speak the same language and have shared vision/goals. CO-CREATION is in progress and in 2019, case studies involving the application of the developed co-creation methodology will be launched by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighborhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.

[https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/ URBANSELF] emphasizes research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives in urban sustainability by exchanging knowledge and solutions to address urban challenges. Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==
https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en)
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/results/en
https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-10-31T20:41:28Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise environmental problem solving, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

[http://www.alternativeproject.eu/ ALTERNATIVE]
<ref> /</ref>

==General introduction to approach==
Approaches to governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasize diverse participants and roles in collective problem-solving efforts. Through “strategic partnerships” (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN]), participants work toward achieving concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/ INCONTEXT]), or catalysing and mainstreaming “carbon and energy reduction in urban policies, activities and the built environment” (e.g., MUSIC). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organizations)through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation, for example, can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
While the approaches can vary, they assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to build and share knowledge and perspectives in their efforts to work toward sustainability goals. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ “out of town hall”] approach, or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these forums provide arrangements for for engaging participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "Out of Town Hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance. These new approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as SEiSMiC “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”. The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight” Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN], a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

==Illustration of approach==

Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to co-create understanding and, in the case of H2020 CO-CREATION project, to address disadvantage in particular. The methodology based on the H2020 CO-CREATION is not yet developed and will be project specific. However, generally co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actor perspectives in order to assert a common foundation in which parties are equal (with equal resources), speak the same language and have shared vision/goals. CO-CREATION is in progress and in 2019, case studies involving the application of the developed co-creation methodology will be launched by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighborhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.

[https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/ URBANSELF] emphasizes research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives in urban sustainability by exchanging knowledge and solutions to address urban challenges. Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==
https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en)
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/results/en
https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-10-31T09:53:20Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise environmental problem solving, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

[http://www.alternativeproject.eu/ ALTERNATIVE]
<ref> /</ref>

==General introduction to approach==
Approaches to governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasize diverse participants and roles in collective problem-solving efforts. Through “strategic partnerships” (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN]), participants work toward achieving concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/ INCONTEXT]), or catalysing and mainstreaming “carbon and energy reduction in urban policies, activities and the built environment” (e.g., MUSIC). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organizations)through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation, for example, can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
While the approaches can vary, they assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to build and share knowledge and perspectives in their efforts to work toward sustainability goals. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ “out of town hall” approach], or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these forums provide arrangements for for engaging participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "Out of Town Hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance. These new approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as SEiSMiC “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”. The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight” Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN], a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

==Illustration of approach==

Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to co-create understanding and, in the case of H2020 CO-CREATION project, to address disadvantage in particular. The methodology based on the H2020 CO-CREATION is not yet developed and will be project specific. However, generally co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actor perspectives in order to assert a common foundation in which parties are equal (with equal resources), speak the same language and have shared vision/goals. CO-CREATION is in progress and in 2019, case studies involving the application of the developed co-creation methodology will be launched by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighborhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.

[https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/ URBANSELF] emphasizes research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives in urban sustainability by exchanging knowledge and solutions to address urban challenges. Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==
https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en)
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/results/en
https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-10-31T09:51:12Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise environmental problem solving, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

[http://www.alternativeproject.eu/ ALTERNATIVE]
<ref> /</ref>

==General introduction to approach==
Approaches to governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasize diverse participants and roles in collective problem-solving efforts. Through “strategic partnerships” (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN]), participants work toward achieving concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/ INCONTEXT]), or catalysing and mainstreaming “carbon and energy reduction in urban policies, activities and the built environment” (e.g., MUSIC). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organizations)through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation, for example, can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
While the approaches can vary, they assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to build and share knowledge and perspectives in their efforts to work toward sustainability goals. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ “out of town hall” approach], or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these forums provide arrangements for for engaging participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "Out of Town Hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance. These new approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as SEiSMiC “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”. The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight” Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. ITSSOIN, a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

==Illustration of approach==

Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to co-create understanding and, in the case of H2020 CO-CREATION project, to address disadvantage in particular. The methodology based on the H2020 CO-CREATION is not yet developed and will be project specific. However, generally co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actor perspectives in order to assert a common foundation in which parties are equal (with equal resources), speak the same language and have shared vision/goals. CO-CREATION is in progress and in 2019, case studies involving the application of the developed co-creation methodology will be launched by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighborhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.

[https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/ URBANSELF] emphasizes research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives in urban sustainability by exchanging knowledge and solutions to address urban challenges. Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==
https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en)
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/results/en
https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-10-31T09:48:11Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise environmental problem solving, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

[http://www.alternativeproject.eu/ ALTERNATIVE]
<ref> /</ref>

==General introduction to approach==
Approaches to governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasize diverse participants and roles in collective problem-solving efforts. Through “strategic partnerships” (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., [http://itssoin.eu/ ITSSOIN]), participants work toward achieving concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g.,[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT), or catalysing and mainstreaming “carbon and energy reduction in urban policies, activities and the built environment” (e.g., MUSIC). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organizations)through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation, for example, can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
While the approaches can vary, they assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to build and share knowledge and perspectives in their efforts to work toward sustainability goals. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ “out of town hall” approach], or [https://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/news/events/urbanexus-dialogue-cafe/ dialogue cafes]. Each of these forums provide arrangements for for engaging participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/282/282679/final1-results-urban-nexus.pdf/ learning spiral approach] applied in the project [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]"aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "Out of Town Hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance. These new approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as SEiSMiC “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”. The project [https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf/ INCONTEXT] provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF] was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight” Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/factsheet/en/ GREENSPACE], involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. ITSSOIN, a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

==Illustration of approach==

Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to co-create understanding and, in the case of H2020 CO-CREATION project, to address disadvantage in particular. The methodology based on the H2020 CO-CREATION is not yet developed and will be project specific. However, generally co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actor perspectives in order to assert a common foundation in which parties are equal (with equal resources), speak the same language and have shared vision/goals. CO-CREATION is in progress and in 2019, case studies involving the application of the developed co-creation methodology will be launched by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighborhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.

[https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf/ URBANSELF] emphasizes research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives in urban sustainability by exchanging knowledge and solutions to address urban challenges. Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==
https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en)
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/results/en
https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-10-31T09:27:06Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise environmental problem solving, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

[http://www.alternativeproject.eu/ ALTERNATIVE]
<ref> /</ref>

==General introduction to approach==
Approaches to governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasize diverse participants and roles in collective problem-solving efforts. Through “strategic partnerships” (see, for example, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]) or social innovation (e.g., ITSSOIN), participants work toward achieving concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/ URBAN-NEXUS]), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., INCONTEXT), or catalysing and mainstreaming “carbon and energy reduction in urban policies, activities and the built environment” (e.g., MUSIC). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organizations)through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation, for example, can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
While the approaches can vary, they assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to build and share knowledge and perspectives in their efforts to work toward sustainability goals. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an “out of town hall” approach, or dialogue cafes. Each of these forums provide arrangements for for engaging participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the learning spiral approach applied in the project URBAN-SELF "aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" <ref>https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en/</ref> An "Out of Town Hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance. These new approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., URBANSELF) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as SEiSMiC “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”. The project INCONTEXT provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for URBANSELF was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight” Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. GREENSPACE, involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. ITSSOIN, a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

==Illustration of approach==

Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to co-create understanding and, in the case of H2020 CO-CREATION project, to address disadvantage in particular. The methodology based on the H2020 CO-CREATION is not yet developed and will be project specific. However, generally co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actor perspectives in order to assert a common foundation in which parties are equal (with equal resources), speak the same language and have shared vision/goals. CO-CREATION is in progress and in 2019, case studies involving the application of the developed co-creation methodology will be launched by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighborhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.

URBANSELF emphasizes research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives in urban sustainability by exchanging knowledge and solutions to address urban challenges. Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==
https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en)
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/results/en
https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]

Governance and participation processes

2019-10-31T09:22:05Z

Tamara Steger:

Governance and participation processes geared toward urban sustainability emphasise environmental problem solving, mainly based on the co-production of knowledge through innovative, diverse and strategic partnerships.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

==General introduction to approach==
Approaches to governance and participation processes that support urban sustainability and just cities emphasize diverse participants and roles in collective problem-solving efforts. Through “strategic partnerships” (URBAN-NEXUS) or social innovation (e.g., ITSSOIN), participants work toward achieving concrete sustainability goals such as “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g., URBAN-NEXUS), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., INCONTEXT), or catalysing and mainstreaming “carbon and energy reduction in urban policies, activities and the built environment” (e.g., MUSIC). These approaches ultimately attempt to overcome the challenges faced by traditional top-down or silo-based governance structures and processes by convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers, and/or by bringing together community members, for example, from the third sector (i.e., voluntary organizations)through social innovation. Bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation, for example, can be critical in such participatory approaches.

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
While the approaches can vary, they assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities to build and share knowledge and perspectives in their efforts to work toward sustainability goals. In this context, knowledge is co-constructed, for example, through action research, a learning spiral approach, community arenas, an “out of town hall” approach, or dialogue cafes. Each of these forums provide arrangements for for engaging participants in gathering and sharing knowledge and perspectives to address mutually identified problems. For example, the learning spiral approach "aims to ensure the formation of new, supported knowledge, the transition from knowledge to action, as well as the constant updating of the acquired knowledge" (see URBANNEXUS). An "Out of Town Hall" approach engages local communities in agenda-setting by giving them the space to identify the most important issues for them, rather than local governments asserting community problems, concerns and issues in advance. These new approaches to participation are assessed not only based on their capacity to promote social innovation, but also their ability to inform concrete problem-solving efforts through, for example, transition management.

While most of these original governance and participation approaches emphasize bottom-up types of approaches at the local scale, such as place-based and “out of town hall” approaches, some are mixed. A “mixed logic analysis” approach, for example, emphasizes dialogue around larger data sets generated by scientific researchers that are then shared with local communities.

Participation processes in the latter stages of implementation (e.g., URBANSELF) tend to demonstrate increasing success, while the success of other projects such as SEiSMiC “depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”. The project INCONTEXT provided lessons learned by coming to the conclusion, for example, that “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for URBANSELF was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight” Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice==
The approaches to governance and participation processes may not all have an urban focus, but the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues, combined with a commitment to diverse participation, connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contrast to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. GREENSPACE, involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

==Narrative of change==
The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity - the need for wider and more diverse engagement - in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

==Transformative potential==
The transformative potential of these approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics through diverse participation, particularly in knowledge sharing. ITSSOIN, a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

==Illustration of approach==

Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to co-create understanding and, in the case of H2020 CO-CREATION project, to address disadvantage in particular. The methodology based on the H2020 CO-CREATION is not yet developed and will be project specific. However, generally co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actor perspectives in order to assert a common foundation in which parties are equal (with equal resources), speak the same language and have shared vision/goals. CO-CREATION is in progress and in 2019, case studies involving the application of the developed co-creation methodology will be launched by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighborhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.

URBANSELF emphasizes research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives in urban sustainability by exchanging knowledge and solutions to address urban challenges. Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

==References==
https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en)
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/results/en
https://www.incontext-fp7.eu/sites/default/files/D5.3_Out%20of%20the%20townhall-final.pdf

[[Category: Approaches]]
[[Category: Experimentation labs]]
[[Category: Co-learning and knowledge brokerage]]
[[Category: Transition towns]]

Democratic innovation through recognition

2019-10-31T09:13:08Z

Tamara Steger:

Democratic innovation through recognition focuses on inclusivity in decision-making and policymaking processes. Diverse participants are convened in different and original ways in order to include multiple perspectives in urban sustainability efforts.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

==General introduction of approach==
Democratic innovation through recognition builds inclusivity in decision- and policy-making in the promotion of equality and justice in urban sustainability. It does so mainly in two ways: procedurally and methodologically with implications for equality. By directly engaging citizens in city budgeting processes (“participatory budgeting”) and in generating scientific knowledge (“civic science”), for example, diverse perspectives and experiences are drawn in from the start. An important aspect of democratic innovation, therefore, is recognition. In this context, roles traditionally assigned to experts and/or technocrats are transferred to citizens and diverse community members. Participatory and action research methodologies are often embedded in the approaches to democratic innovation that also invite citizens themselves to design and conduct meaningful research with the aim of improving the lives of subordinated or historically excluded groups (e.g.,[http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY], [http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE]), as well as confronting and transforming existing power dynamics (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/ TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY]). For example, the approaches taken in [http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY] and [http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE] projects draw important attention to garnering and integrating youth perspectives more in related political processes through forums of engagement that feed into the policymaking process. In this context, new perspectives emerge by tackling different issues ranging from restorative justice (see [http://www.alternativeproject.eu/ ALTERNATIVE]) to air quality (see [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE]).

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Democrative innovative approaches establish diverse participatory forums predominantly applied at a small scale in multiple settings. While some approaches (see [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/ TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY] and [http://www.alternativeproject.eu/ ALTERNATIVE] projects) are geared toward managing conflict and tensions inherent in democratic contexts, others emphasize procedural inclusivity with practical implications for establishing goals or agenda setting (e.g, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]), generating knowledge (e.g., [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE]), and producing various outcomes such as [http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/content/original/Book%20covers/Local%20PDFs/185%20Participatory%20budgeting%20in%20the%20Indische%20Buurt%202015.pdf/ budgetary plans for a local municipality]. The strength of these approaches, based on the examined projects, is found in the inclusive practical applications whereby disadvantaged, subordinated, or excluded people have the opportunity to participate in meaningful forums. While some of the forums produce concrete outputs, others are more about establishing cooperative civic relationships and networks. In many cases, however, it is not clear how the various approaches and their contributions endure once the project comes to an end. In some cases, experienced facilitators or conciliators are needed for transferability, particularly in the approaches that are directly focused on transforming conflict and power dynamics.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Urban, sustainability, and justice==
Small community contexts or large convenings of a particular group (e.g., youth) generally provide the platforms for exploring and testing democratic innovation. Hence, in urban contexts, the approaches may be considered a good fit for neighborhood-size processes/projects or for larger city-wide efforts depending on the approach. These approaches to democratic innovation address justice in different ways, but particularly touch upon procedural justice with potential implications for distributive justice (i.e., who gets what and why). Democratic innovation promotes recognition by working with subordinated groups or challenging power dynamics through recognition in a way that either directly impacts sustainability, as in the case of Citizen Observations (COs) - also known as civic science - or creates potential for more democratic sustainability measures by generating experiences that build on civic capacities and expectations.

==Narrative of change==
It is well known that policymaking tends to be driven by powerful special interests. Democratic innovation creates openings in the dynamics of policy-making that is often driven by special interests and lobbies and, as a result, tends to exclude certain social groups. Through a bundle of approaches that fall under the democratic innovation umbrella, formerly excluded perspectives and contributions can emerge and directly impact decision- and policy-making. The expectation, and proven potential of these approaches, is that through shifting the power dynamics that sustain exclusionary mechanisms within democratic polities, more just social outcomes will be achieved that will also help advance urban sustainability.

==Transformative potential==
The different approaches covered here each have an inherent aspect that builds the potential for change. They do this in several ways: 1) making inclusivity central to governance approaches 2) opening procedural opportunities in participatory processes and 3) engagement in a common endeavor that is about life satisfaction and quality, and 4) dealing with conflict/tensions or power dynamics. In particular, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/ TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY] project directly addresses power dynamics in which "misunderstandings and linguistic difference can become a starting point for a politics of translation that fosters a more inclusive and effective decision making, and strengthens social movements and local urban democracy in multilingual societies."<ref> https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/</ref> By opening up these opportunities and (political) spaces, transformation can occur as power dynamics and institutions are brought into question. As a result, not only the process but the very content of policy can be contested and rearticulated.

==Illustrations of approaches==

Democratic innovation approaches share a common methodology characterised by recognition in which particular segments of society take on new roles and are engaged in decision- or policy-making processes or forums that are traditionally predominated by others, such as experts (or adults). It is this aspect that makes them particularly innovative. Below are some examples of implemented approaches based on three different projects.

[http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE] developed “citizens’ observatories” to engage citizens in environmental monitoring and information gathering through Earth Observation applications. Citizens engaged in science for the purposes of addressing sustainability issues is an innovative approach that circumvents that idea that science is strictly the realm of experts. It recognizes that laypersons can also contribute in the process of garnering important knowledge as part of the process of making decisions and policies. Citizens’ observatories” (COs) were employed in the project [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE] to empower citizens to contribute to and participate in environmental governance, to enable them to support and influence community and societal priorities and associated decision making. In this process, a community-based environmental monitoring and information system using innovative and novel Earth Observation applications was developed, tested and demonstrated. In [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE], citizens gathered air quality data through sensors that provided real-time information on air quality in Barcelona, Belgrade, Edinburgh, Haifa, Ljubljana, Oslo, Ostrava, Vienna. The data was subsequently made available through widgets and mobile phone applications allowing people to comment and further share information. While there were some challenges in the project associated with, for example, data privacy, ethical and security issues, and scientific standards such as quality and reliability, the CO approach could increase awareness about environmental risks at minimal cost. Key aspects were identified as follows: “Based upon the review of different ongoing COs and of CO-related programmes in the environmental domain, we have identified key elements and qualities which are essential for a CO programme: (i) Be a unique virtual place to gather and share data from a variety of sources: novel sensor-technologies, open environmental data from public and national sources, and personal per- ceptions and textual/graphical contribution; and (ii) Extract and make use of relevant citizens-related data and provide multimodal services for citizens, communities and authorities.”<ref> Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’ observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance. Environmental Health 2014 13:107, pp. 10./</ref>

Recognizing the important role of young disadvantaged people in policymaking brings in new perspectives that promote equality and quality of life from the perspective of a formally excluded segment of society. The project [http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY] developed innovative ways for specifically enhancing the participation of disadvantaged youth in policymaking. This project established a forum for allowing young people to articulate their concerns and needs regarding quality of life issues that could be shared with stakeholders, politicians and non-governmental entities. The project specifically, “explores how young people aged 15-24 live in different European countries today; and examines what can be done to create social and institutional opportunities which will better enable them to live the lives they have reason to value” <ref> http://www.society-youth.eu//</ref>

[http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE], in a similar effort, also engaged disadvantaged and marginalized youth from major European cities in forums supported by socially innovative resources and technologies to assist policymakers across local, national and EU scales to address inequality.

==References==
<references />

[[Category: Clusters of approaches]]
[[Category: Approaches]]

Democratic innovation through recognition

2019-10-31T09:11:07Z

Tamara Steger:

Democratic innovation through recognition focuses on inclusivity in decision-making and policymaking processes. Diverse participants are convened in different and original ways in order to include multiple perspectives in urban sustainability efforts.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

The [http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/ TRANSIT research project]
<ref> https://www.transitiontowntotnes.org/</ref>
[http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/ TRANSIT]
<ref> https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/</ref>

==General introduction of approach==
Democratic innovation through recognition builds inclusivity in decision- and policy-making in the promotion of equality and justice in urban sustainability. It does so mainly in two ways: procedurally and methodologically with implications for equality. By directly engaging citizens in city budgeting processes (“participatory budgeting”) and in generating scientific knowledge (“civic science”), for example, diverse perspectives and experiences are drawn in from the start. An important aspect of democratic innovation, therefore, is recognition. In this context, roles traditionally assigned to experts and/or technocrats are transferred to citizens and diverse community members. Participatory and action research methodologies are often embedded in the approaches to democratic innovation that also invite citizens themselves to design and conduct meaningful research with the aim of improving the lives of subordinated or historically excluded groups (e.g.,[http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY], [http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE]), as well as confronting and transforming existing power dynamics (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/ TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY]). For example, the approaches taken in [http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY] and [http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE] projects draw important attention to garnering and integrating youth perspectives more in related political processes through forums of engagement that feed into the policymaking process. In this context, new perspectives emerge by tackling different issues ranging from restorative justice (see [http://www.alternativeproject.eu/ ALTERNATIVE]) to air quality (see [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE]).

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Democrative innovative approaches establish diverse participatory forums predominantly applied at a small scale in multiple settings. While some approaches (see [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/ TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY] and [http://www.alternativeproject.eu/ ALTERNATIVE] projects) are geared toward managing conflict and tensions inherent in democratic contexts, others emphasize procedural inclusivity with practical implications for establishing goals or agenda setting (e.g, [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en/ URBANSELF]), generating knowledge (e.g., [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE]), and producing various outcomes such as [http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/content/original/Book%20covers/Local%20PDFs/185%20Participatory%20budgeting%20in%20the%20Indische%20Buurt%202015.pdf/ budgetary plans for a local municipality]. The strength of these approaches, based on the examined projects, is found in the inclusive practical applications whereby disadvantaged, subordinated, or excluded people have the opportunity to participate in meaningful forums. While some of the forums produce concrete outputs, others are more about establishing cooperative civic relationships and networks. In many cases, however, it is not clear how the various approaches and their contributions endure once the project comes to an end. In some cases, experienced facilitators or conciliators are needed for transferability, particularly in the approaches that are directly focused on transforming conflict and power dynamics.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Urban, sustainability, and justice==
Small community contexts or large convenings of a particular group (e.g., youth) generally provide the platforms for exploring and testing democratic innovation. Hence, in urban contexts, the approaches may be considered a good fit for neighborhood-size processes/projects or for larger city-wide efforts depending on the approach. These approaches to democratic innovation address justice in different ways, but particularly touch upon procedural justice with potential implications for distributive justice (i.e., who gets what and why). Democratic innovation promotes recognition by working with subordinated groups or challenging power dynamics through recognition in a way that either directly impacts sustainability, as in the case of Citizen Observations (COs) - also known as civic science - or creates potential for more democratic sustainability measures by generating experiences that build on civic capacities and expectations.

==Narrative of change==
It is well known that policymaking tends to be driven by powerful special interests. Democratic innovation creates openings in the dynamics of policy-making that is often driven by special interests and lobbies and, as a result, tends to exclude certain social groups. Through a bundle of approaches that fall under the democratic innovation umbrella, formerly excluded perspectives and contributions can emerge and directly impact decision- and policy-making. The expectation, and proven potential of these approaches, is that through shifting the power dynamics that sustain exclusionary mechanisms within democratic polities, more just social outcomes will be achieved that will also help advance urban sustainability.

==Transformative potential==
The different approaches covered here each have an inherent aspect that builds the potential for change. They do this in several ways: 1) making inclusivity central to governance approaches 2) opening procedural opportunities in participatory processes and 3) engagement in a common endeavor that is about life satisfaction and quality, and 4) dealing with conflict/tensions or power dynamics. In particular, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/ TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY] project directly addresses power dynamics in which "misunderstandings and linguistic difference can become a starting point for a politics of translation that fosters a more inclusive and effective decision making, and strengthens social movements and local urban democracy in multilingual societies."<ref> https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/</ref> By opening up these opportunities and (political) spaces, transformation can occur as power dynamics and institutions are brought into question. As a result, not only the process but the very content of policy can be contested and rearticulated.

==Illustrations of approaches==

Democratic innovation approaches share a common methodology characterised by recognition in which particular segments of society take on new roles and are engaged in decision- or policy-making processes or forums that are traditionally predominated by others, such as experts (or adults). It is this aspect that makes them particularly innovative. Below are some examples of implemented approaches based on three different projects.

[http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE] developed “citizens’ observatories” to engage citizens in environmental monitoring and information gathering through Earth Observation applications. Citizens engaged in science for the purposes of addressing sustainability issues is an innovative approach that circumvents that idea that science is strictly the realm of experts. It recognizes that laypersons can also contribute in the process of garnering important knowledge as part of the process of making decisions and policies. Citizens’ observatories” (COs) were employed in the project [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE] to empower citizens to contribute to and participate in environmental governance, to enable them to support and influence community and societal priorities and associated decision making. In this process, a community-based environmental monitoring and information system using innovative and novel Earth Observation applications was developed, tested and demonstrated. In [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE], citizens gathered air quality data through sensors that provided real-time information on air quality in Barcelona, Belgrade, Edinburgh, Haifa, Ljubljana, Oslo, Ostrava, Vienna. The data was subsequently made available through widgets and mobile phone applications allowing people to comment and further share information. While there were some challenges in the project associated with, for example, data privacy, ethical and security issues, and scientific standards such as quality and reliability, the CO approach could increase awareness about environmental risks at minimal cost. Key aspects were identified as follows: “Based upon the review of different ongoing COs and of CO-related programmes in the environmental domain, we have identified key elements and qualities which are essential for a CO programme: (i) Be a unique virtual place to gather and share data from a variety of sources: novel sensor-technologies, open environmental data from public and national sources, and personal per- ceptions and textual/graphical contribution; and (ii) Extract and make use of relevant citizens-related data and provide multimodal services for citizens, communities and authorities.”<ref> Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’ observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance. Environmental Health 2014 13:107, pp. 10./</ref>

Recognizing the important role of young disadvantaged people in policymaking brings in new perspectives that promote equality and quality of life from the perspective of a formally excluded segment of society. The project [http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY] developed innovative ways for specifically enhancing the participation of disadvantaged youth in policymaking. This project established a forum for allowing young people to articulate their concerns and needs regarding quality of life issues that could be shared with stakeholders, politicians and non-governmental entities. The project specifically, “explores how young people aged 15-24 live in different European countries today; and examines what can be done to create social and institutional opportunities which will better enable them to live the lives they have reason to value” <ref> http://www.society-youth.eu//</ref>

[http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE], in a similar effort, also engaged disadvantaged and marginalized youth from major European cities in forums supported by socially innovative resources and technologies to assist policymakers across local, national and EU scales to address inequality.

==References==
<references />

http://www.society-youth.eu
http://www.citi-sense.eu
Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance.Environmental Health 2014 13:107.
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en
http://www.citispyce.eu
http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu
Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’ observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance. Environmental Health 2014 13:107, pp. 10.

[[Category: Clusters of approaches]]
[[Category: Approaches]]

Democratic innovation through recognition

2019-10-31T08:56:30Z

Tamara Steger:

Democratic innovation through recognition focuses on inclusivity in decision-making and policymaking processes. Diverse participants are convened in different and original ways in order to include multiple perspectives in urban sustainability efforts.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

The [http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/ TRANSIT research project]
<ref> https://www.transitiontowntotnes.org/</ref>
[http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/ TRANSIT]
<ref> https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/</ref>

==General introduction of approach==
Democratic innovation through recognition builds inclusivity in decision- and policy-making in the promotion of equality and justice in urban sustainability. It does so mainly in two ways: procedurally and methodologically with implications for equality. By directly engaging citizens in city budgeting processes (“participatory budgeting”) and in generating scientific knowledge (“civic science”), for example, diverse perspectives and experiences are drawn in from the start. An important aspect of democratic innovation, therefore, is recognition. In this context, roles traditionally assigned to experts and/or technocrats are transferred to citizens and diverse community members. Participatory and action research methodologies are often embedded in the approaches to democratic innovation that also invite citizens themselves to design and conduct meaningful research with the aim of improving the lives of subordinated or historically excluded groups (e.g.,[http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY], [http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE]), as well as confronting and transforming existing power dynamics (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/ TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY]). For example, the approaches taken in [http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY] and [http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE] projects draw important attention to garnering and integrating youth perspectives more in related political processes through forums of engagement that feed into the policymaking process. In this context, new perspectives emerge by tackling different issues ranging from restorative justice (ALTERNATIVE) to air quality (see [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE]).

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Democrative innovative approaches establish diverse participatory forums predominantly applied at a small scale in multiple settings. While some approaches (see [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/ TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY] and ALTERNATIVE projects) are geared toward managing conflict and tensions inherent in democratic contexts, others emphasize procedural inclusivity with practical implications for establishing goals or agenda setting (e.g, URBANSELF), generating knowledge (e.g., [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE]), and producing various outcomes such as [http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/content/original/Book%20covers/Local%20PDFs/185%20Participatory%20budgeting%20in%20the%20Indische%20Buurt%202015.pdf/ budgetary plans for a local municipality]. The strength of these approaches, based on the examined projects, is found in the inclusive practical applications whereby disadvantaged, subordinated, or excluded people have the opportunity to participate in meaningful forums. While some of the forums produce concrete outputs, others are more about establishing cooperative civic relationships and networks. In many cases, however, it is not clear how the various approaches and their contributions endure once the project comes to an end. In some cases, experienced facilitators or conciliators are needed for transferability, particularly in the approaches that are directly focused on transforming conflict and power dynamics.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Urban, sustainability, and justice==
Small community contexts or large convenings of a particular group (e.g., youth) generally provide the platforms for exploring and testing democratic innovation. Hence, in urban contexts, the approaches may be considered a good fit for neighborhood-size processes/projects or for larger city-wide efforts depending on the approach. These approaches to democratic innovation address justice in different ways, but particularly touch upon procedural justice with potential implications for distributive justice (i.e., who gets what and why). Democratic innovation promotes recognition by working with subordinated groups or challenging power dynamics through recognition in a way that either directly impacts sustainability, as in the case of Citizen Observations (COs) - also known as civic science - or creates potential for more democratic sustainability measures by generating experiences that build on civic capacities and expectations.

==Narrative of change==
It is well known that policymaking tends to be driven by powerful special interests. Democratic innovation creates openings in the dynamics of policy-making that is often driven by special interests and lobbies and, as a result, tends to exclude certain social groups. Through a bundle of approaches that fall under the democratic innovation umbrella, formerly excluded perspectives and contributions can emerge and directly impact decision- and policy-making. The expectation, and proven potential of these approaches, is that through shifting the power dynamics that sustain exclusionary mechanisms within democratic polities, more just social outcomes will be achieved that will also help advance urban sustainability.

==Transformative potential==
The different approaches covered here each have an inherent aspect that builds the potential for change. They do this in several ways: 1) making inclusivity central to governance approaches 2) opening procedural opportunities in participatory processes and 3) engagement in a common endeavor that is about life satisfaction and quality, and 4) dealing with conflict/tensions or power dynamics. In particular, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/ TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY] project directly addresses power dynamics in which "misunderstandings and linguistic difference can become a starting point for a politics of translation that fosters a more inclusive and effective decision making, and strengthens social movements and local urban democracy in multilingual societies."<ref> https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/</ref> By opening up these opportunities and (political) spaces, transformation can occur as power dynamics and institutions are brought into question. As a result, not only the process but the very content of policy can be contested and rearticulated.

==Illustrations of approaches==

Democratic innovation approaches share a common methodology characterised by recognition in which particular segments of society take on new roles and are engaged in decision- or policy-making processes or forums that are traditionally predominated by others, such as experts (or adults). It is this aspect that makes them particularly innovative. Below are some examples of implemented approaches based on three different projects.

[http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE] developed “citizens’ observatories” to engage citizens in environmental monitoring and information gathering through Earth Observation applications. Citizens engaged in science for the purposes of addressing sustainability issues is an innovative approach that circumvents that idea that science is strictly the realm of experts. It recognizes that laypersons can also contribute in the process of garnering important knowledge as part of the process of making decisions and policies. Citizens’ observatories” (COs) were employed in the project [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE] to empower citizens to contribute to and participate in environmental governance, to enable them to support and influence community and societal priorities and associated decision making. In this process, a community-based environmental monitoring and information system using innovative and novel Earth Observation applications was developed, tested and demonstrated. In [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE], citizens gathered air quality data through sensors that provided real-time information on air quality in Barcelona, Belgrade, Edinburgh, Haifa, Ljubljana, Oslo, Ostrava, Vienna. The data was subsequently made available through widgets and mobile phone applications allowing people to comment and further share information. While there were some challenges in the project associated with, for example, data privacy, ethical and security issues, and scientific standards such as quality and reliability, the CO approach could increase awareness about environmental risks at minimal cost. Key aspects were identified as follows: “Based upon the review of different ongoing COs and of CO-related programmes in the environmental domain, we have identified key elements and qualities which are essential for a CO programme: (i) Be a unique virtual place to gather and share data from a variety of sources: novel sensor-technologies, open environmental data from public and national sources, and personal per- ceptions and textual/graphical contribution; and (ii) Extract and make use of relevant citizens-related data and provide multimodal services for citizens, communities and authorities.” (See Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’ observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance. Environmental Health 2014 13:107, pp. 10.)

Recognizing the important role of young disadvantaged people in policymaking brings in new perspectives that promote equality and quality of life from the perspective of a formally excluded segment of society. The project [http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY] developed innovative ways for specifically enhancing the participation of disadvantaged youth in policymaking. This project established a forum for allowing young people to articulate their concerns and needs regarding quality of life issues that could be shared with stakeholders, politicians and non-governmental entities. The project specifically, “explores how young people aged 15-24 live in different European countries today; and examines what can be done to create social and institutional opportunities which will better enable them to live the lives they have reason to value” <ref> http://www.society-youth.eu//</ref>

[http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE], in a similar effort, also engaged disadvantaged and marginalized youth from major European cities in forums supported by socially innovative resources and technologies to assist policymakers across local, national and EU scales to address inequality.

==References==
<references />

http://www.society-youth.eu
http://www.citi-sense.eu
Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance.Environmental Health 2014 13:107.
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en
http://www.citispyce.eu
http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu
Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’ observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance. Environmental Health 2014 13:107, pp. 10.

[[Category: Clusters of approaches]]
[[Category: Approaches]]

Democratic innovation through recognition

2019-10-31T08:45:40Z

Tamara Steger:

Democratic innovation through recognition focuses on inclusivity in decision-making and policymaking processes. Diverse participants are convened in different and original ways in order to include multiple perspectives in urban sustainability efforts.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

The [http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/ TRANSIT research project]
<ref> https://www.transitiontowntotnes.org/</ref>
[http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/ TRANSIT]

==General introduction of approach==
Democratic innovation through recognition builds inclusivity in decision- and policy-making in the promotion of equality and justice in urban sustainability. It does so mainly in two ways: procedurally and methodologically with implications for equality. By directly engaging citizens in city budgeting processes (“participatory budgeting”) and in generating scientific knowledge (“civic science”), for example, diverse perspectives and experiences are drawn in from the start. An important aspect of democratic innovation, therefore, is recognition. In this context, roles traditionally assigned to experts and/or technocrats are transferred to citizens and diverse community members. Participatory and action research methodologies are often embedded in the approaches to democratic innovation that also invite citizens themselves to design and conduct meaningful research with the aim of improving the lives of subordinated or historically excluded groups (e.g.,[http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY], [http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE]), as well as confronting and transforming existing power dynamics (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/ TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY]). For example, the approaches taken in [http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY] and [http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE] projects draw important attention to garnering and integrating youth perspectives more in related political processes through forums of engagement that feed into the policymaking process. In this context, new perspectives emerge by tackling different issues ranging from restorative justice (ALTERNATIVE) to air quality (see [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE]).

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Democrative innovative approaches establish diverse participatory forums predominantly applied at a small scale in multiple settings. While some approaches (see [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/ TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY] and ALTERNATIVE projects) are geared toward managing conflict and tensions inherent in democratic contexts, others emphasize procedural inclusivity with practical implications for establishing goals or agenda setting (e.g, URBANSELF), generating knowledge (e.g., [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE]), and producing various outcomes such as [http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/content/original/Book%20covers/Local%20PDFs/185%20Participatory%20budgeting%20in%20the%20Indische%20Buurt%202015.pdf/ budgetary plans for a local municipality]. The strength of these approaches, based on the examined projects, is found in the inclusive practical applications whereby disadvantaged, subordinated, or excluded people have the opportunity to participate in meaningful forums. While some of the forums produce concrete outputs, others are more about establishing cooperative civic relationships and networks. In many cases, however, it is not clear how the various approaches and their contributions endure once the project comes to an end. In some cases, experienced facilitators or conciliators are needed for transferability, particularly in the approaches that are directly focused on transforming conflict and power dynamics.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Urban, sustainability, and justice==
Small community contexts or large convenings of a particular group (e.g., youth) generally provide the platforms for exploring and testing democratic innovation. Hence, in urban contexts, the approaches may be considered a good fit for neighborhood-size processes/projects or for larger city-wide efforts depending on the approach. These approaches to democratic innovation address justice in different ways, but particularly touch upon procedural justice with potential implications for distributive justice (i.e., who gets what and why). Democratic innovation promotes recognition by working with subordinated groups or challenging power dynamics through recognition in a way that either directly impacts sustainability, as in the case of Citizen Observations (COs) - also known as civic science - or creates potential for more democratic sustainability measures by generating experiences that build on civic capacities and expectations.

==Narrative of change==
It is well known that policymaking tends to be driven by powerful special interests. Democratic innovation creates openings in the dynamics of policy-making that is often driven by special interests and lobbies and, as a result, tends to exclude certain social groups. Through a bundle of approaches that fall under the democratic innovation umbrella, formerly excluded perspectives and contributions can emerge and directly impact decision- and policy-making. The expectation, and proven potential of these approaches, is that through shifting the power dynamics that sustain exclusionary mechanisms within democratic polities, more just social outcomes will be achieved that will also help advance urban sustainability.

==Transformative potential==
The different approaches covered here each have an inherent aspect that builds the potential for change. They do this in several ways: 1) making inclusivity central to governance approaches 2) opening procedural opportunities in participatory processes and 3) engagement in a common endeavor that is about life satisfaction and quality, and 4) dealing with conflict/tensions or power dynamics. In particular, the [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/ TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY] project directly addresses power dynamics in which “differences and misunderstandings can be a springboard for more inclusive and effective decision making.” By opening up these opportunities and (political) spaces, transformation can occur as power dynamics and institutions are brought into question. As a result, not only the process but the very content of policy can be contested and rearticulated.

==Illustrations of approaches==

Democratic innovation approaches share a common methodology characterised by recognition in which particular segments of society take on new roles and are engaged in decision- or policy-making processes or forums that are traditionally predominated by others, such as experts (or adults). It is this aspect that makes them particularly innovative. Below are some examples of implemented approaches based on three different projects.

[http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE] developed “citizens’ observatories” to engage citizens in environmental monitoring and information gathering through Earth Observation applications. Citizens engaged in science for the purposes of addressing sustainability issues is an innovative approach that circumvents that idea that science is strictly the realm of experts. It recognizes that laypersons can also contribute in the process of garnering important knowledge as part of the process of making decisions and policies. Citizens’ observatories” (COs) were employed in the project [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE] to empower citizens to contribute to and participate in environmental governance, to enable them to support and influence community and societal priorities and associated decision making. In this process, a community-based environmental monitoring and information system using innovative and novel Earth Observation applications was developed, tested and demonstrated. In [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE], citizens gathered air quality data through sensors that provided real-time information on air quality in Barcelona, Belgrade, Edinburgh, Haifa, Ljubljana, Oslo, Ostrava, Vienna. The data was subsequently made available through widgets and mobile phone applications allowing people to comment and further share information. While there were some challenges in the project associated with, for example, data privacy, ethical and security issues, and scientific standards such as quality and reliability, the CO approach could increase awareness about environmental risks at minimal cost. Key aspects were identified as follows: “Based upon the review of different ongoing COs and of CO-related programmes in the environmental domain, we have identified key elements and qualities which are essential for a CO programme: (i) Be a unique virtual place to gather and share data from a variety of sources: novel sensor-technologies, open environmental data from public and national sources, and personal per- ceptions and textual/graphical contribution; and (ii) Extract and make use of relevant citizens-related data and provide multimodal services for citizens, communities and authorities.” (See Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’ observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance. Environmental Health 2014 13:107, pp. 10.)

Recognizing the important role of young disadvantaged people in policymaking brings in new perspectives that promote equality and quality of life from the perspective of a formally excluded segment of society. The project [http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY] developed innovative ways for specifically enhancing the participation of disadvantaged youth in policymaking. This project established a forum for allowing young people to articulate their concerns and needs regarding quality of life issues that could be shared with stakeholders, politicians and non-governmental entities. The project specifically, “explores how young people aged 15-24 live in different European countries today; and examines what can be done to create social and institutional opportunities which will better enable them to live the lives they have reason to value” <ref> http://www.society-youth.eu//</ref>

[http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE], in a similar effort, also engaged disadvantaged and marginalized youth from major European cities in forums supported by socially innovative resources and technologies to assist policymakers across local, national and EU scales to address inequality.

==References==
<references />

http://www.society-youth.eu
http://www.citi-sense.eu
Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance.Environmental Health 2014 13:107.
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en
http://www.citispyce.eu
http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu
Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’ observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance. Environmental Health 2014 13:107, pp. 10.

[[Category: Clusters of approaches]]
[[Category: Approaches]]

Democratic innovation through recognition

2019-10-31T08:42:24Z

Tamara Steger:

Democratic innovation through recognition focuses on inclusivity in decision-making and policymaking processes. Diverse participants are convened in different and original ways in order to include multiple perspectives in urban sustainability efforts.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

The [http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/ TRANSIT research project]
<ref> https://www.transitiontowntotnes.org/</ref>
[http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/ TRANSIT]

==General introduction of approach==
Democratic innovation through recognition builds inclusivity in decision- and policy-making in the promotion of equality and justice in urban sustainability. It does so mainly in two ways: procedurally and methodologically with implications for equality. By directly engaging citizens in city budgeting processes (“participatory budgeting”) and in generating scientific knowledge (“civic science”), for example, diverse perspectives and experiences are drawn in from the start. An important aspect of democratic innovation, therefore, is recognition. In this context, roles traditionally assigned to experts and/or technocrats are transferred to citizens and diverse community members. Participatory and action research methodologies are often embedded in the approaches to democratic innovation that also invite citizens themselves to design and conduct meaningful research with the aim of improving the lives of subordinated or historically excluded groups (e.g.,[http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY], [http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE]), as well as confronting and transforming existing power dynamics (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/ TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY]). For example, the approaches taken in [http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY] and [http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE] projects draw important attention to garnering and integrating youth perspectives more in related political processes through forums of engagement that feed into the policymaking process. In this context, new perspectives emerge by tackling different issues ranging from restorative justice (ALTERNATIVE) to air quality (see [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE]).

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Democrative innovative approaches establish diverse participatory forums predominantly applied at a small scale in multiple settings. While some approaches (see [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/ TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY] and ALTERNATIVE projects) are geared toward managing conflict and tensions inherent in democratic contexts, others emphasize procedural inclusivity with practical implications for establishing goals or agenda setting (e.g, URBANSELF), generating knowledge (e.g., [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE]), and [http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/content/original/Book%20covers/Local%20PDFs/185%20Participatory%20budgeting%20in%20the%20Indische%20Buurt%202015.pdf/ producing various outcomes such as budgetary plans for a local municipality]. The strength of these approaches, based on the examined projects, is found in the inclusive practical applications whereby disadvantaged, subordinated, or excluded people have the opportunity to participate in meaningful forums. While some of the forums produce concrete outputs, others are more about establishing cooperative civic relationships and networks. In many cases, however, it is not clear how the various approaches and their contributions endure once the project comes to an end. In some cases, experienced facilitators or conciliators are needed for transferability, particularly in the approaches that are directly focused on transforming conflict and power dynamics.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Urban, sustainability, and justice==
Small community contexts or large convenings of a particular group (e.g., youth) generally provide the platforms for exploring and testing democratic innovation. Hence, in urban contexts, the approaches may be considered a good fit for neighborhood-size processes/projects or for larger city-wide efforts depending on the approach. These approaches to democratic innovation address justice in different ways, but particularly touch upon procedural justice with potential implications for distributive justice (i.e., who gets what and why). Democratic innovation promotes recognition by working with subordinated groups or challenging power dynamics through recognition in a way that either directly impacts sustainability, as in the case of Citizen Observations (COs) - also known as civic science - or creates potential for more democratic sustainability measures by generating experiences that build on civic capacities and expectations.

==Narrative of change==
It is well known that policymaking tends to be driven by powerful special interests. Democratic innovation creates openings in the dynamics of policy-making that is often driven by special interests and lobbies and, as a result, tends to exclude certain social groups. Through a bundle of approaches that fall under the democratic innovation umbrella, formerly excluded perspectives and contributions can emerge and directly impact decision- and policy-making. The expectation, and proven potential of these approaches, is that through shifting the power dynamics that sustain exclusionary mechanisms within democratic polities, more just social outcomes will be achieved that will also help advance urban sustainability.

==Transformative potential==
The different approaches covered here each have an inherent aspect that builds the potential for change. They do this in several ways: 1) making inclusivity central to governance approaches 2) opening procedural opportunities in participatory processes and 3) engagement in a common endeavor that is about life satisfaction and quality, and 4) dealing with conflict/tensions or power dynamics. In particular, the TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY project directly addresses power dynamics in which “differences and misunderstandings can be a springboard for more inclusive and effective decision making.” By opening up these opportunities and (political) spaces, transformation can occur as power dynamics and institutions are brought into question. As a result, not only the process but the very content of policy can be contested and rearticulated.

==Illustrations of approaches==

Democratic innovation approaches share a common methodology characterised by recognition in which particular segments of society take on new roles and are engaged in decision- or policy-making processes or forums that are traditionally predominated by others, such as experts (or adults). It is this aspect that makes them particularly innovative. Below are some examples of implemented approaches based on three different projects.

[http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE] developed “citizens’ observatories” to engage citizens in environmental monitoring and information gathering through Earth Observation applications. Citizens engaged in science for the purposes of addressing sustainability issues is an innovative approach that circumvents that idea that science is strictly the realm of experts. It recognizes that laypersons can also contribute in the process of garnering important knowledge as part of the process of making decisions and policies. Citizens’ observatories” (COs) were employed in the project [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE] to empower citizens to contribute to and participate in environmental governance, to enable them to support and influence community and societal priorities and associated decision making. In this process, a community-based environmental monitoring and information system using innovative and novel Earth Observation applications was developed, tested and demonstrated. In [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE], citizens gathered air quality data through sensors that provided real-time information on air quality in Barcelona, Belgrade, Edinburgh, Haifa, Ljubljana, Oslo, Ostrava, Vienna. The data was subsequently made available through widgets and mobile phone applications allowing people to comment and further share information. While there were some challenges in the project associated with, for example, data privacy, ethical and security issues, and scientific standards such as quality and reliability, the CO approach could increase awareness about environmental risks at minimal cost. Key aspects were identified as follows: “Based upon the review of different ongoing COs and of CO-related programmes in the environmental domain, we have identified key elements and qualities which are essential for a CO programme: (i) Be a unique virtual place to gather and share data from a variety of sources: novel sensor-technologies, open environmental data from public and national sources, and personal per- ceptions and textual/graphical contribution; and (ii) Extract and make use of relevant citizens-related data and provide multimodal services for citizens, communities and authorities.” (See Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’ observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance. Environmental Health 2014 13:107, pp. 10.)

Recognizing the important role of young disadvantaged people in policymaking brings in new perspectives that promote equality and quality of life from the perspective of a formally excluded segment of society. The project [http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY] developed innovative ways for specifically enhancing the participation of disadvantaged youth in policymaking. This project established a forum for allowing young people to articulate their concerns and needs regarding quality of life issues that could be shared with stakeholders, politicians and non-governmental entities. The project specifically, “explores how young people aged 15-24 live in different European countries today; and examines what can be done to create social and institutional opportunities which will better enable them to live the lives they have reason to value” <ref> http://www.society-youth.eu//</ref>

[http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE], in a similar effort, also engaged disadvantaged and marginalized youth from major European cities in forums supported by socially innovative resources and technologies to assist policymakers across local, national and EU scales to address inequality.

==References==
<references />

http://www.society-youth.eu
http://www.citi-sense.eu
Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance.Environmental Health 2014 13:107.
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en
http://www.citispyce.eu
http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu
Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’ observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance. Environmental Health 2014 13:107, pp. 10.

[[Category: Clusters of approaches]]
[[Category: Approaches]]

Democratic innovation through recognition

2019-10-31T08:38:12Z

Tamara Steger:

Democratic innovation through recognition focuses on inclusivity in decision-making and policymaking processes. Diverse participants are convened in different and original ways in order to include multiple perspectives in urban sustainability efforts.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

The [http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/ TRANSIT research project]
<ref> https://www.transitiontowntotnes.org/</ref>
[https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/ TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY]

==General introduction of approach==
Democratic innovation through recognition builds inclusivity in decision- and policy-making in the promotion of equality and justice in urban sustainability. It does so mainly in two ways: procedurally and methodologically with implications for equality. By directly engaging citizens in city budgeting processes (“participatory budgeting”) and in generating scientific knowledge (“civic science”), for example, diverse perspectives and experiences are drawn in from the start. An important aspect of democratic innovation, therefore, is recognition. In this context, roles traditionally assigned to experts and/or technocrats are transferred to citizens and diverse community members. Participatory and action research methodologies are often embedded in the approaches to democratic innovation that also invite citizens themselves to design and conduct meaningful research with the aim of improving the lives of subordinated or historically excluded groups (e.g.,[http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY], [http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE]), as well as confronting and transforming existing power dynamics (e.g., [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/ TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY]). For example, the approaches taken in [http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY] and [http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE] projects draw important attention to garnering and integrating youth perspectives more in related political processes through forums of engagement that feed into the policymaking process. In this context, new perspectives emerge by tackling different issues ranging from restorative justice (ALTERNATIVE) to air quality (see [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE]).

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Democrative innovative approaches establish diverse participatory forums predominantly applied at a small scale in multiple settings. While some approaches (see [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en/ TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY] and ALTERNATIVE projects) are geared toward managing conflict and tensions inherent in democratic contexts, others emphasize procedural inclusivity with practical implications for establishing goals or agenda setting (e.g, URBANSELF), generating knowledge (e.g., [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE]), and producing various outcomes such as budgetary plans for a local municipality (TRANSIT). The strength of these approaches, based on the examined projects, is found in the inclusive practical applications whereby disadvantaged, subordinated, or excluded people have the opportunity to participate in meaningful forums. While some of the forums produce concrete outputs, others are more about establishing cooperative civic relationships and networks. In many cases, however, it is not clear how the various approaches and their contributions endure once the project comes to an end. In some cases, experienced facilitators or conciliators are needed for transferability, particularly in the approaches that are directly focused on transforming conflict and power dynamics.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Urban, sustainability, and justice==
Small community contexts or large convenings of a particular group (e.g., youth) generally provide the platforms for exploring and testing democratic innovation. Hence, in urban contexts, the approaches may be considered a good fit for neighborhood-size processes/projects or for larger city-wide efforts depending on the approach. These approaches to democratic innovation address justice in different ways, but particularly touch upon procedural justice with potential implications for distributive justice (i.e., who gets what and why). Democratic innovation promotes recognition by working with subordinated groups or challenging power dynamics through recognition in a way that either directly impacts sustainability, as in the case of Citizen Observations (COs) - also known as civic science - or creates potential for more democratic sustainability measures by generating experiences that build on civic capacities and expectations.

==Narrative of change==
It is well known that policymaking tends to be driven by powerful special interests. Democratic innovation creates openings in the dynamics of policy-making that is often driven by special interests and lobbies and, as a result, tends to exclude certain social groups. Through a bundle of approaches that fall under the democratic innovation umbrella, formerly excluded perspectives and contributions can emerge and directly impact decision- and policy-making. The expectation, and proven potential of these approaches, is that through shifting the power dynamics that sustain exclusionary mechanisms within democratic polities, more just social outcomes will be achieved that will also help advance urban sustainability.

==Transformative potential==
The different approaches covered here each have an inherent aspect that builds the potential for change. They do this in several ways: 1) making inclusivity central to governance approaches 2) opening procedural opportunities in participatory processes and 3) engagement in a common endeavor that is about life satisfaction and quality, and 4) dealing with conflict/tensions or power dynamics. In particular, the TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY project directly addresses power dynamics in which “differences and misunderstandings can be a springboard for more inclusive and effective decision making.” By opening up these opportunities and (political) spaces, transformation can occur as power dynamics and institutions are brought into question. As a result, not only the process but the very content of policy can be contested and rearticulated.

==Illustrations of approaches==

Democratic innovation approaches share a common methodology characterised by recognition in which particular segments of society take on new roles and are engaged in decision- or policy-making processes or forums that are traditionally predominated by others, such as experts (or adults). It is this aspect that makes them particularly innovative. Below are some examples of implemented approaches based on three different projects.

[http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE] developed “citizens’ observatories” to engage citizens in environmental monitoring and information gathering through Earth Observation applications. Citizens engaged in science for the purposes of addressing sustainability issues is an innovative approach that circumvents that idea that science is strictly the realm of experts. It recognizes that laypersons can also contribute in the process of garnering important knowledge as part of the process of making decisions and policies. Citizens’ observatories” (COs) were employed in the project [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE] to empower citizens to contribute to and participate in environmental governance, to enable them to support and influence community and societal priorities and associated decision making. In this process, a community-based environmental monitoring and information system using innovative and novel Earth Observation applications was developed, tested and demonstrated. In [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE], citizens gathered air quality data through sensors that provided real-time information on air quality in Barcelona, Belgrade, Edinburgh, Haifa, Ljubljana, Oslo, Ostrava, Vienna. The data was subsequently made available through widgets and mobile phone applications allowing people to comment and further share information. While there were some challenges in the project associated with, for example, data privacy, ethical and security issues, and scientific standards such as quality and reliability, the CO approach could increase awareness about environmental risks at minimal cost. Key aspects were identified as follows: “Based upon the review of different ongoing COs and of CO-related programmes in the environmental domain, we have identified key elements and qualities which are essential for a CO programme: (i) Be a unique virtual place to gather and share data from a variety of sources: novel sensor-technologies, open environmental data from public and national sources, and personal per- ceptions and textual/graphical contribution; and (ii) Extract and make use of relevant citizens-related data and provide multimodal services for citizens, communities and authorities.” (See Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’ observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance. Environmental Health 2014 13:107, pp. 10.)

Recognizing the important role of young disadvantaged people in policymaking brings in new perspectives that promote equality and quality of life from the perspective of a formally excluded segment of society. The project [http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY] developed innovative ways for specifically enhancing the participation of disadvantaged youth in policymaking. This project established a forum for allowing young people to articulate their concerns and needs regarding quality of life issues that could be shared with stakeholders, politicians and non-governmental entities. The project specifically, “explores how young people aged 15-24 live in different European countries today; and examines what can be done to create social and institutional opportunities which will better enable them to live the lives they have reason to value” <ref> http://www.society-youth.eu//</ref>

[http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE], in a similar effort, also engaged disadvantaged and marginalized youth from major European cities in forums supported by socially innovative resources and technologies to assist policymakers across local, national and EU scales to address inequality.

==References==
<references />

http://www.society-youth.eu
http://www.citi-sense.eu
Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance.Environmental Health 2014 13:107.
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en
http://www.citispyce.eu
http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu
Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’ observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance. Environmental Health 2014 13:107, pp. 10.

[[Category: Clusters of approaches]]
[[Category: Approaches]]

Democratic innovation through recognition

2019-10-31T08:33:02Z

Tamara Steger:

Democratic innovation through recognition focuses on inclusivity in decision-making and policymaking processes. Diverse participants are convened in different and original ways in order to include multiple perspectives in urban sustainability efforts.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

The [http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/ TRANSIT research project]
<ref> https://www.transitiontowntotnes.org/</ref>
http://www.citi-sense.eu/CITISENSE]

==General introduction of approach==
Democratic innovation through recognition builds inclusivity in decision- and policy-making in the promotion of equality and justice in urban sustainability. It does so mainly in two ways: procedurally and methodologically with implications for equality. By directly engaging citizens in city budgeting processes (“participatory budgeting”) and in generating scientific knowledge (“civic science”), for example, diverse perspectives and experiences are drawn in from the start. An important aspect of democratic innovation, therefore, is recognition. In this context, roles traditionally assigned to experts and/or technocrats are transferred to citizens and diverse community members. Participatory and action research methodologies are often embedded in the approaches to democratic innovation that also invite citizens themselves to design and conduct meaningful research with the aim of improving the lives of subordinated or historically excluded groups (e.g.,[http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY], [http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE]), as well as confronting and transforming existing power dynamics (e.g., TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY). For example, the approaches taken in [http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY] and [http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE] projects draw important attention to garnering and integrating youth perspectives more in related political processes through forums of engagement that feed into the policymaking process. In this context, new perspectives emerge by tackling different issues ranging from restorative justice (ALTERNATIVE) to air quality (see [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE]).

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Democrative innovative approaches establish diverse participatory forums predominantly applied at a small scale in multiple settings. While some approaches (see TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY and ALTERNATIVE projects) are geared toward managing conflict and tensions inherent in democratic contexts, others emphasize procedural inclusivity with practical implications for establishing goals or agenda setting (e.g, URBANSELF), generating knowledge (e.g., [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE]), and producing various outcomes such as budgetary plans for a local municipality (TRANSIT). The strength of these approaches, based on the examined projects, is found in the inclusive practical applications whereby disadvantaged, subordinated, or excluded people have the opportunity to participate in meaningful forums. While some of the forums produce concrete outputs, others are more about establishing cooperative civic relationships and networks. In many cases, however, it is not clear how the various approaches and their contributions endure once the project comes to an end. In some cases, experienced facilitators or conciliators are needed for transferability, particularly in the approaches that are directly focused on transforming conflict and power dynamics.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Urban, sustainability, and justice==
Small community contexts or large convenings of a particular group (e.g., youth) generally provide the platforms for exploring and testing democratic innovation. Hence, in urban contexts, the approaches may be considered a good fit for neighborhood-size processes/projects or for larger city-wide efforts depending on the approach. These approaches to democratic innovation address justice in different ways, but particularly touch upon procedural justice with potential implications for distributive justice (i.e., who gets what and why). Democratic innovation promotes recognition by working with subordinated groups or challenging power dynamics through recognition in a way that either directly impacts sustainability, as in the case of Citizen Observations (COs) - also known as civic science - or creates potential for more democratic sustainability measures by generating experiences that build on civic capacities and expectations.

==Narrative of change==
It is well known that policymaking tends to be driven by powerful special interests. Democratic innovation creates openings in the dynamics of policy-making that is often driven by special interests and lobbies and, as a result, tends to exclude certain social groups. Through a bundle of approaches that fall under the democratic innovation umbrella, formerly excluded perspectives and contributions can emerge and directly impact decision- and policy-making. The expectation, and proven potential of these approaches, is that through shifting the power dynamics that sustain exclusionary mechanisms within democratic polities, more just social outcomes will be achieved that will also help advance urban sustainability.

==Transformative potential==
The different approaches covered here each have an inherent aspect that builds the potential for change. They do this in several ways: 1) making inclusivity central to governance approaches 2) opening procedural opportunities in participatory processes and 3) engagement in a common endeavor that is about life satisfaction and quality, and 4) dealing with conflict/tensions or power dynamics. In particular, the TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY project directly addresses power dynamics in which “differences and misunderstandings can be a springboard for more inclusive and effective decision making.” By opening up these opportunities and (political) spaces, transformation can occur as power dynamics and institutions are brought into question. As a result, not only the process but the very content of policy can be contested and rearticulated.

==Illustrations of approaches==

Democratic innovation approaches share a common methodology characterised by recognition in which particular segments of society take on new roles and are engaged in decision- or policy-making processes or forums that are traditionally predominated by others, such as experts (or adults). It is this aspect that makes them particularly innovative. Below are some examples of implemented approaches based on three different projects.

[http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE] developed “citizens’ observatories” to engage citizens in environmental monitoring and information gathering through Earth Observation applications. Citizens engaged in science for the purposes of addressing sustainability issues is an innovative approach that circumvents that idea that science is strictly the realm of experts. It recognizes that laypersons can also contribute in the process of garnering important knowledge as part of the process of making decisions and policies. Citizens’ observatories” (COs) were employed in the project [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE] to empower citizens to contribute to and participate in environmental governance, to enable them to support and influence community and societal priorities and associated decision making. In this process, a community-based environmental monitoring and information system using innovative and novel Earth Observation applications was developed, tested and demonstrated. In [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE], citizens gathered air quality data through sensors that provided real-time information on air quality in Barcelona, Belgrade, Edinburgh, Haifa, Ljubljana, Oslo, Ostrava, Vienna. The data was subsequently made available through widgets and mobile phone applications allowing people to comment and further share information. While there were some challenges in the project associated with, for example, data privacy, ethical and security issues, and scientific standards such as quality and reliability, the CO approach could increase awareness about environmental risks at minimal cost. Key aspects were identified as follows: “Based upon the review of different ongoing COs and of CO-related programmes in the environmental domain, we have identified key elements and qualities which are essential for a CO programme: (i) Be a unique virtual place to gather and share data from a variety of sources: novel sensor-technologies, open environmental data from public and national sources, and personal per- ceptions and textual/graphical contribution; and (ii) Extract and make use of relevant citizens-related data and provide multimodal services for citizens, communities and authorities.” (See Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’ observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance. Environmental Health 2014 13:107, pp. 10.)

Recognizing the important role of young disadvantaged people in policymaking brings in new perspectives that promote equality and quality of life from the perspective of a formally excluded segment of society. The project [http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY] developed innovative ways for specifically enhancing the participation of disadvantaged youth in policymaking. This project established a forum for allowing young people to articulate their concerns and needs regarding quality of life issues that could be shared with stakeholders, politicians and non-governmental entities. The project specifically, “explores how young people aged 15-24 live in different European countries today; and examines what can be done to create social and institutional opportunities which will better enable them to live the lives they have reason to value” <ref> http://www.society-youth.eu//</ref>

[http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE], in a similar effort, also engaged disadvantaged and marginalized youth from major European cities in forums supported by socially innovative resources and technologies to assist policymakers across local, national and EU scales to address inequality.

==References==
<references />

http://www.society-youth.eu
http://www.citi-sense.eu
Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance.Environmental Health 2014 13:107.
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en
http://www.citispyce.eu
http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu
Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’ observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance. Environmental Health 2014 13:107, pp. 10.

[[Category: Clusters of approaches]]
[[Category: Approaches]]

Democratic innovation through recognition

2019-10-31T08:30:52Z

Tamara Steger:

Democratic innovation through recognition focuses on inclusivity in decision-making and policymaking processes. Diverse participants are convened in different and original ways in order to include multiple perspectives in urban sustainability efforts.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

The [http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/ TRANSIT research project]
<ref> https://www.transitiontowntotnes.org/</ref>
http://www.citi-sense.eu/CITISENSE]

==General introduction of approach==
Democratic innovation through recognition builds inclusivity in decision- and policy-making in the promotion of equality and justice in urban sustainability. It does so mainly in two ways: procedurally and methodologically with implications for equality. By directly engaging citizens in city budgeting processes (“participatory budgeting”) and in generating scientific knowledge (“civic science”), for example, diverse perspectives and experiences are drawn in from the start. An important aspect of democratic innovation, therefore, is recognition. In this context, roles traditionally assigned to experts and/or technocrats are transferred to citizens and diverse community members. Participatory and action research methodologies are often embedded in the approaches to democratic innovation that also invite citizens themselves to design and conduct meaningful research with the aim of improving the lives of subordinated or historically excluded groups (e.g.,[http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY], [http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE]), as well as confronting and transforming existing power dynamics (e.g., TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY). For example, the approaches taken in [http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY] and [http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE] projects draw important attention to garnering and integrating youth perspectives more in related political processes through forums of engagement that feed into the policymaking process. In this context, new perspectives emerge by tackling different issues ranging from restorative justice (ALTERNATIVE) to air quality (see [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE]).

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Democrative innovative approaches establish diverse participatory forums predominantly applied at a small scale in multiple settings. While some approaches (see TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY and ALTERNATIVE projects) are geared toward managing conflict and tensions inherent in democratic contexts, others emphasize procedural inclusivity with practical implications for establishing goals or agenda setting (e.g, URBANSELF), generating knowledge (e.g., http://www.citi-sense.eu/CITISENSE]), and producing various outcomes such as budgetary plans for a local municipality (TRANSIT). The strength of these approaches, based on the examined projects, is found in the inclusive practical applications whereby disadvantaged, subordinated, or excluded people have the opportunity to participate in meaningful forums. While some of the forums produce concrete outputs, others are more about establishing cooperative civic relationships and networks. In many cases, however, it is not clear how the various approaches and their contributions endure once the project comes to an end. In some cases, experienced facilitators or conciliators are needed for transferability, particularly in the approaches that are directly focused on transforming conflict and power dynamics.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Urban, sustainability, and justice==
Small community contexts or large convenings of a particular group (e.g., youth) generally provide the platforms for exploring and testing democratic innovation. Hence, in urban contexts, the approaches may be considered a good fit for neighborhood-size processes/projects or for larger city-wide efforts depending on the approach. These approaches to democratic innovation address justice in different ways, but particularly touch upon procedural justice with potential implications for distributive justice (i.e., who gets what and why). Democratic innovation promotes recognition by working with subordinated groups or challenging power dynamics through recognition in a way that either directly impacts sustainability, as in the case of Citizen Observations (COs) - also known as civic science - or creates potential for more democratic sustainability measures by generating experiences that build on civic capacities and expectations.

==Narrative of change==
It is well known that policymaking tends to be driven by powerful special interests. Democratic innovation creates openings in the dynamics of policy-making that is often driven by special interests and lobbies and, as a result, tends to exclude certain social groups. Through a bundle of approaches that fall under the democratic innovation umbrella, formerly excluded perspectives and contributions can emerge and directly impact decision- and policy-making. The expectation, and proven potential of these approaches, is that through shifting the power dynamics that sustain exclusionary mechanisms within democratic polities, more just social outcomes will be achieved that will also help advance urban sustainability.

==Transformative potential==
The different approaches covered here each have an inherent aspect that builds the potential for change. They do this in several ways: 1) making inclusivity central to governance approaches 2) opening procedural opportunities in participatory processes and 3) engagement in a common endeavor that is about life satisfaction and quality, and 4) dealing with conflict/tensions or power dynamics. In particular, the TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY project directly addresses power dynamics in which “differences and misunderstandings can be a springboard for more inclusive and effective decision making.” By opening up these opportunities and (political) spaces, transformation can occur as power dynamics and institutions are brought into question. As a result, not only the process but the very content of policy can be contested and rearticulated.

==Illustrations of approaches==

Democratic innovation approaches share a common methodology characterised by recognition in which particular segments of society take on new roles and are engaged in decision- or policy-making processes or forums that are traditionally predominated by others, such as experts (or adults). It is this aspect that makes them particularly innovative. Below are some examples of implemented approaches based on three different projects.

[http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE] developed “citizens’ observatories” to engage citizens in environmental monitoring and information gathering through Earth Observation applications. Citizens engaged in science for the purposes of addressing sustainability issues is an innovative approach that circumvents that idea that science is strictly the realm of experts. It recognizes that laypersons can also contribute in the process of garnering important knowledge as part of the process of making decisions and policies. Citizens’ observatories” (COs) were employed in the project [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE] to empower citizens to contribute to and participate in environmental governance, to enable them to support and influence community and societal priorities and associated decision making. In this process, a community-based environmental monitoring and information system using innovative and novel Earth Observation applications was developed, tested and demonstrated. In [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE], citizens gathered air quality data through sensors that provided real-time information on air quality in Barcelona, Belgrade, Edinburgh, Haifa, Ljubljana, Oslo, Ostrava, Vienna. The data was subsequently made available through widgets and mobile phone applications allowing people to comment and further share information. While there were some challenges in the project associated with, for example, data privacy, ethical and security issues, and scientific standards such as quality and reliability, the CO approach could increase awareness about environmental risks at minimal cost. Key aspects were identified as follows: “Based upon the review of different ongoing COs and of CO-related programmes in the environmental domain, we have identified key elements and qualities which are essential for a CO programme: (i) Be a unique virtual place to gather and share data from a variety of sources: novel sensor-technologies, open environmental data from public and national sources, and personal per- ceptions and textual/graphical contribution; and (ii) Extract and make use of relevant citizens-related data and provide multimodal services for citizens, communities and authorities.” (See Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’ observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance. Environmental Health 2014 13:107, pp. 10.)

Recognizing the important role of young disadvantaged people in policymaking brings in new perspectives that promote equality and quality of life from the perspective of a formally excluded segment of society. The project [http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY] developed innovative ways for specifically enhancing the participation of disadvantaged youth in policymaking. This project established a forum for allowing young people to articulate their concerns and needs regarding quality of life issues that could be shared with stakeholders, politicians and non-governmental entities. The project specifically, “explores how young people aged 15-24 live in different European countries today; and examines what can be done to create social and institutional opportunities which will better enable them to live the lives they have reason to value” (see http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY).

[http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE], in a similar effort, also engaged disadvantaged and marginalized youth from major European cities in forums supported by socially innovative resources and technologies to assist policymakers across local, national and EU scales to address inequality.

==References==
<references />

http://www.society-youth.eu
http://www.citi-sense.eu
Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance.Environmental Health 2014 13:107.
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en
http://www.citispyce.eu
http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu
Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’ observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance. Environmental Health 2014 13:107, pp. 10.

[[Category: Clusters of approaches]]
[[Category: Approaches]]

Democratic innovation through recognition

2019-10-31T08:29:32Z

Tamara Steger:

Democratic innovation through recognition focuses on inclusivity in decision-making and policymaking processes. Diverse participants are convened in different and original ways in order to include multiple perspectives in urban sustainability efforts.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

The [http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/ TRANSIT research project]
<ref> https://www.transitiontowntotnes.org/</ref>
http://www.citi-sense.eu/CITISENSE]

==General introduction of approach==
Democratic innovation through recognition builds inclusivity in decision- and policy-making in the promotion of equality and justice in urban sustainability. It does so mainly in two ways: procedurally and methodologically with implications for equality. By directly engaging citizens in city budgeting processes (“participatory budgeting”) and in generating scientific knowledge (“civic science”), for example, diverse perspectives and experiences are drawn in from the start. An important aspect of democratic innovation, therefore, is recognition. In this context, roles traditionally assigned to experts and/or technocrats are transferred to citizens and diverse community members. Participatory and action research methodologies are often embedded in the approaches to democratic innovation that also invite citizens themselves to design and conduct meaningful research with the aim of improving the lives of subordinated or historically excluded groups (e.g.,[http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY], [http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE]), as well as confronting and transforming existing power dynamics (e.g., TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY). For example, the approaches taken in [http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY] and [http://www.citispyce.eu/CITISPYCE] projects draw important attention to garnering and integrating youth perspectives more in related political processes through forums of engagement that feed into the policymaking process. In this context, new perspectives emerge by tackling different issues ranging from restorative justice (ALTERNATIVE) to air quality (see http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE]).

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Democrative innovative approaches establish diverse participatory forums predominantly applied at a small scale in multiple settings. While some approaches (see TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY and ALTERNATIVE projects) are geared toward managing conflict and tensions inherent in democratic contexts, others emphasize procedural inclusivity with practical implications for establishing goals or agenda setting (e.g, URBANSELF), generating knowledge (e.g., http://www.citi-sense.eu/CITISENSE]), and producing various outcomes such as budgetary plans for a local municipality (TRANSIT). The strength of these approaches, based on the examined projects, is found in the inclusive practical applications whereby disadvantaged, subordinated, or excluded people have the opportunity to participate in meaningful forums. While some of the forums produce concrete outputs, others are more about establishing cooperative civic relationships and networks. In many cases, however, it is not clear how the various approaches and their contributions endure once the project comes to an end. In some cases, experienced facilitators or conciliators are needed for transferability, particularly in the approaches that are directly focused on transforming conflict and power dynamics.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Urban, sustainability, and justice==
Small community contexts or large convenings of a particular group (e.g., youth) generally provide the platforms for exploring and testing democratic innovation. Hence, in urban contexts, the approaches may be considered a good fit for neighborhood-size processes/projects or for larger city-wide efforts depending on the approach. These approaches to democratic innovation address justice in different ways, but particularly touch upon procedural justice with potential implications for distributive justice (i.e., who gets what and why). Democratic innovation promotes recognition by working with subordinated groups or challenging power dynamics through recognition in a way that either directly impacts sustainability, as in the case of Citizen Observations (COs) - also known as civic science - or creates potential for more democratic sustainability measures by generating experiences that build on civic capacities and expectations.

==Narrative of change==
It is well known that policymaking tends to be driven by powerful special interests. Democratic innovation creates openings in the dynamics of policy-making that is often driven by special interests and lobbies and, as a result, tends to exclude certain social groups. Through a bundle of approaches that fall under the democratic innovation umbrella, formerly excluded perspectives and contributions can emerge and directly impact decision- and policy-making. The expectation, and proven potential of these approaches, is that through shifting the power dynamics that sustain exclusionary mechanisms within democratic polities, more just social outcomes will be achieved that will also help advance urban sustainability.

==Transformative potential==
The different approaches covered here each have an inherent aspect that builds the potential for change. They do this in several ways: 1) making inclusivity central to governance approaches 2) opening procedural opportunities in participatory processes and 3) engagement in a common endeavor that is about life satisfaction and quality, and 4) dealing with conflict/tensions or power dynamics. In particular, the TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY project directly addresses power dynamics in which “differences and misunderstandings can be a springboard for more inclusive and effective decision making.” By opening up these opportunities and (political) spaces, transformation can occur as power dynamics and institutions are brought into question. As a result, not only the process but the very content of policy can be contested and rearticulated.

==Illustrations of approaches==

Democratic innovation approaches share a common methodology characterised by recognition in which particular segments of society take on new roles and are engaged in decision- or policy-making processes or forums that are traditionally predominated by others, such as experts (or adults). It is this aspect that makes them particularly innovative. Below are some examples of implemented approaches based on three different projects.

[http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE] developed “citizens’ observatories” to engage citizens in environmental monitoring and information gathering through Earth Observation applications. Citizens engaged in science for the purposes of addressing sustainability issues is an innovative approach that circumvents that idea that science is strictly the realm of experts. It recognizes that laypersons can also contribute in the process of garnering important knowledge as part of the process of making decisions and policies. Citizens’ observatories” (COs) were employed in the project [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE] to empower citizens to contribute to and participate in environmental governance, to enable them to support and influence community and societal priorities and associated decision making. In this process, a community-based environmental monitoring and information system using innovative and novel Earth Observation applications was developed, tested and demonstrated. In [http://www.citi-sense.eu/ CITISENSE], citizens gathered air quality data through sensors that provided real-time information on air quality in Barcelona, Belgrade, Edinburgh, Haifa, Ljubljana, Oslo, Ostrava, Vienna. The data was subsequently made available through widgets and mobile phone applications allowing people to comment and further share information. While there were some challenges in the project associated with, for example, data privacy, ethical and security issues, and scientific standards such as quality and reliability, the CO approach could increase awareness about environmental risks at minimal cost. Key aspects were identified as follows: “Based upon the review of different ongoing COs and of CO-related programmes in the environmental domain, we have identified key elements and qualities which are essential for a CO programme: (i) Be a unique virtual place to gather and share data from a variety of sources: novel sensor-technologies, open environmental data from public and national sources, and personal per- ceptions and textual/graphical contribution; and (ii) Extract and make use of relevant citizens-related data and provide multimodal services for citizens, communities and authorities.” (See Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’ observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance. Environmental Health 2014 13:107, pp. 10.)

Recognizing the important role of young disadvantaged people in policymaking brings in new perspectives that promote equality and quality of life from the perspective of a formally excluded segment of society. The project [http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY] developed innovative ways for specifically enhancing the participation of disadvantaged youth in policymaking. This project established a forum for allowing young people to articulate their concerns and needs regarding quality of life issues that could be shared with stakeholders, politicians and non-governmental entities. The project specifically, “explores how young people aged 15-24 live in different European countries today; and examines what can be done to create social and institutional opportunities which will better enable them to live the lives they have reason to value” (see http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY).

[http://www.citispyce.eu/ CITISPYCE], in a similar effort, also engaged disadvantaged and marginalized youth from major European cities in forums supported by socially innovative resources and technologies to assist policymakers across local, national and EU scales to address inequality.

==References==
<references />

http://www.society-youth.eu
http://www.citi-sense.eu
Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance.Environmental Health 2014 13:107.
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en
http://www.citispyce.eu
http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu
Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’ observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance. Environmental Health 2014 13:107, pp. 10.

[[Category: Clusters of approaches]]
[[Category: Approaches]]

Democratic innovation through recognition

2019-10-31T08:26:52Z

Tamara Steger:

Democratic innovation through recognition focuses on inclusivity in decision-making and policymaking processes. Diverse participants are convened in different and original ways in order to include multiple perspectives in urban sustainability efforts.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

The [http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/ TRANSIT research project]
<ref> https://www.transitiontowntotnes.org/</ref>
http://www.citi-sense.eu/CITISENSE]

==General introduction of approach==
Democratic innovation through recognition builds inclusivity in decision- and policy-making in the promotion of equality and justice in urban sustainability. It does so mainly in two ways: procedurally and methodologically with implications for equality. By directly engaging citizens in city budgeting processes (“participatory budgeting”) and in generating scientific knowledge (“civic science”), for example, diverse perspectives and experiences are drawn in from the start. An important aspect of democratic innovation, therefore, is recognition. In this context, roles traditionally assigned to experts and/or technocrats are transferred to citizens and diverse community members. Participatory and action research methodologies are often embedded in the approaches to democratic innovation that also invite citizens themselves to design and conduct meaningful research with the aim of improving the lives of subordinated or historically excluded groups (e.g.,[http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY], [http://www.citispyce.eu/CITISPYCE]), as well as confronting and transforming existing power dynamics (e.g., TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY). For example, the approaches taken in [http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY] and [http://www.citispyce.eu/CITISPYCE] projects draw important attention to garnering and integrating youth perspectives more in related political processes through forums of engagement that feed into the policymaking process. In this context, new perspectives emerge by tackling different issues ranging from restorative justice (ALTERNATIVE) to air quality (see http://www.citi-sense.eu/CITISENSE]).

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Democrative innovative approaches establish diverse participatory forums predominantly applied at a small scale in multiple settings. While some approaches (see TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY and ALTERNATIVE projects) are geared toward managing conflict and tensions inherent in democratic contexts, others emphasize procedural inclusivity with practical implications for establishing goals or agenda setting (e.g, URBANSELF), generating knowledge (e.g., http://www.citi-sense.eu/CITISENSE]), and producing various outcomes such as budgetary plans for a local municipality (TRANSIT). The strength of these approaches, based on the examined projects, is found in the inclusive practical applications whereby disadvantaged, subordinated, or excluded people have the opportunity to participate in meaningful forums. While some of the forums produce concrete outputs, others are more about establishing cooperative civic relationships and networks. In many cases, however, it is not clear how the various approaches and their contributions endure once the project comes to an end. In some cases, experienced facilitators or conciliators are needed for transferability, particularly in the approaches that are directly focused on transforming conflict and power dynamics.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Urban, sustainability, and justice==
Small community contexts or large convenings of a particular group (e.g., youth) generally provide the platforms for exploring and testing democratic innovation. Hence, in urban contexts, the approaches may be considered a good fit for neighborhood-size processes/projects or for larger city-wide efforts depending on the approach. These approaches to democratic innovation address justice in different ways, but particularly touch upon procedural justice with potential implications for distributive justice (i.e., who gets what and why). Democratic innovation promotes recognition by working with subordinated groups or challenging power dynamics through recognition in a way that either directly impacts sustainability, as in the case of Citizen Observations (COs) - also known as civic science - or creates potential for more democratic sustainability measures by generating experiences that build on civic capacities and expectations.

==Narrative of change==
It is well known that policymaking tends to be driven by powerful special interests. Democratic innovation creates openings in the dynamics of policy-making that is often driven by special interests and lobbies and, as a result, tends to exclude certain social groups. Through a bundle of approaches that fall under the democratic innovation umbrella, formerly excluded perspectives and contributions can emerge and directly impact decision- and policy-making. The expectation, and proven potential of these approaches, is that through shifting the power dynamics that sustain exclusionary mechanisms within democratic polities, more just social outcomes will be achieved that will also help advance urban sustainability.

==Transformative potential==
The different approaches covered here each have an inherent aspect that builds the potential for change. They do this in several ways: 1) making inclusivity central to governance approaches 2) opening procedural opportunities in participatory processes and 3) engagement in a common endeavor that is about life satisfaction and quality, and 4) dealing with conflict/tensions or power dynamics. In particular, the TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY project directly addresses power dynamics in which “differences and misunderstandings can be a springboard for more inclusive and effective decision making.” By opening up these opportunities and (political) spaces, transformation can occur as power dynamics and institutions are brought into question. As a result, not only the process but the very content of policy can be contested and rearticulated.

==Illustrations of approaches==

Democratic innovation approaches share a common methodology characterised by recognition in which particular segments of society take on new roles and are engaged in decision- or policy-making processes or forums that are traditionally predominated by others, such as experts (or adults). It is this aspect that makes them particularly innovative. Below are some examples of implemented approaches based on three different projects.

http://www.citi-sense.eu/CITISENSE] developed “citizens’ observatories” to engage citizens in environmental monitoring and information gathering through Earth Observation applications. Citizens engaged in science for the purposes of addressing sustainability issues is an innovative approach that circumvents that idea that science is strictly the realm of experts. It recognizes that laypersons can also contribute in the process of garnering important knowledge as part of the process of making decisions and policies. Citizens’ observatories” (COs) were employed in the project CITISENSE to empower citizens to contribute to and participate in environmental governance, to enable them to support and influence community and societal priorities and associated decision making. In this process, a community-based environmental monitoring and information system using innovative and novel Earth Observation applications was developed, tested and demonstrated. In http://www.citi-sense.eu/CITISENSE], citizens gathered air quality data through sensors that provided real-time information on air quality in Barcelona, Belgrade, Edinburgh, Haifa, Ljubljana, Oslo, Ostrava, Vienna. The data was subsequently made available through widgets and mobile phone applications allowing people to comment and further share information. While there were some challenges in the project associated with, for example, data privacy, ethical and security issues, and scientific standards such as quality and reliability, the CO approach could increase awareness about environmental risks at minimal cost. Key aspects were identified as follows: “Based upon the review of different ongoing COs and of CO-related programmes in the environmental domain, we have identified key elements and qualities which are essential for a CO programme: (i) Be a unique virtual place to gather and share data from a variety of sources: novel sensor-technologies, open environmental data from public and national sources, and personal per- ceptions and textual/graphical contribution; and (ii) Extract and make use of relevant citizens-related data and provide multimodal services for citizens, communities and authorities.” (See Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’ observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance. Environmental Health 2014 13:107, pp. 10.)

Recognizing the important role of young disadvantaged people in policymaking brings in new perspectives that promote equality and quality of life from the perspective of a formally excluded segment of society. The project [http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY] developed innovative ways for specifically enhancing the participation of disadvantaged youth in policymaking. This project established a forum for allowing young people to articulate their concerns and needs regarding quality of life issues that could be shared with stakeholders, politicians and non-governmental entities. The project specifically, “explores how young people aged 15-24 live in different European countries today; and examines what can be done to create social and institutional opportunities which will better enable them to live the lives they have reason to value” (see http://www.society-youth.eu).

[http://www.citispyce.eu/CITISPYCE], in a similar effort, also engaged disadvantaged and marginalized youth from major European cities in forums supported by socially innovative resources and technologies to assist policymakers across local, national and EU scales to address inequality.

==References==
<references />

http://www.society-youth.eu
http://www.citi-sense.eu
Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance.Environmental Health 2014 13:107.
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en
http://www.citispyce.eu
http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu
Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’ observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance. Environmental Health 2014 13:107, pp. 10.

[[Category: Clusters of approaches]]
[[Category: Approaches]]

Democratic innovation through recognition

2019-10-31T08:21:19Z

Tamara Steger:

Democratic innovation through recognition focuses on inclusivity in decision-making and policymaking processes. Diverse participants are convened in different and original ways in order to include multiple perspectives in urban sustainability efforts.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

The [http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/ TRANSIT research project]
<ref> https://www.transitiontowntotnes.org/</ref>

==General introduction of approach==
Democratic innovation through recognition builds inclusivity in decision- and policy-making in the promotion of equality and justice in urban sustainability. It does so mainly in two ways: procedurally and methodologically with implications for equality. By directly engaging citizens in city budgeting processes (“participatory budgeting”) and in generating scientific knowledge (“civic science”), for example, diverse perspectives and experiences are drawn in from the start. An important aspect of democratic innovation, therefore, is recognition. In this context, roles traditionally assigned to experts and/or technocrats are transferred to citizens and diverse community members. Participatory and action research methodologies are often embedded in the approaches to democratic innovation that also invite citizens themselves to design and conduct meaningful research with the aim of improving the lives of subordinated or historically excluded groups (e.g.,[http://www.society-youth.eu/ SocIEtY], CITISPYCE), as well as confronting and transforming existing power dynamics (e.g., TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY). For example, the approaches taken in SocIEtY and CITISPYCE projects draw important attention to garnering and integrating youth perspectives more in related political processes through forums of engagement that feed into the policymaking process. In this context, new perspectives emerge by tackling different issues ranging from restorative justice (ALTERNATIVE) to air quality (CITI-SENSE).

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Democrative innovative approaches establish diverse participatory forums predominantly applied at a small scale in multiple settings. While some approaches (see TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY and ALTERNATIVE projects) are geared toward managing conflict and tensions inherent in democratic contexts, others emphasize procedural inclusivity with practical implications for establishing goals or agenda setting (e.g, URBANSELF), generating knowledge (e.g., CITI-SENSE), and producing various outcomes such as budgetary plans for a local municipality (TRANSIT). The strength of these approaches, based on the examined projects, is found in the inclusive practical applications whereby disadvantaged, subordinated, or excluded people have the opportunity to participate in meaningful forums. While some of the forums produce concrete outputs, others are more about establishing cooperative civic relationships and networks. In many cases, however, it is not clear how the various approaches and their contributions endure once the project comes to an end. In some cases, experienced facilitators or conciliators are needed for transferability, particularly in the approaches that are directly focused on transforming conflict and power dynamics.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Urban, sustainability, and justice==
Small community contexts or large convenings of a particular group (e.g., youth) generally provide the platforms for exploring and testing democratic innovation. Hence, in urban contexts, the approaches may be considered a good fit for neighborhood-size processes/projects or for larger city-wide efforts depending on the approach. These approaches to democratic innovation address justice in different ways, but particularly touch upon procedural justice with potential implications for distributive justice (i.e., who gets what and why). Democratic innovation promotes recognition by working with subordinated groups or challenging power dynamics through recognition in a way that either directly impacts sustainability, as in the case of Citizen Observations (COs) - also known as civic science - or creates potential for more democratic sustainability measures by generating experiences that build on civic capacities and expectations.

==Narrative of change==
It is well known that policymaking tends to be driven by powerful special interests. Democratic innovation creates openings in the dynamics of policy-making that is often driven by special interests and lobbies and, as a result, tends to exclude certain social groups. Through a bundle of approaches that fall under the democratic innovation umbrella, formerly excluded perspectives and contributions can emerge and directly impact decision- and policy-making. The expectation, and proven potential of these approaches, is that through shifting the power dynamics that sustain exclusionary mechanisms within democratic polities, more just social outcomes will be achieved that will also help advance urban sustainability.

==Transformative potential==
The different approaches covered here each have an inherent aspect that builds the potential for change. They do this in several ways: 1) making inclusivity central to governance approaches 2) opening procedural opportunities in participatory processes and 3) engagement in a common endeavor that is about life satisfaction and quality, and 4) dealing with conflict/tensions or power dynamics. In particular, the TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY project directly addresses power dynamics in which “differences and misunderstandings can be a springboard for more inclusive and effective decision making.” By opening up these opportunities and (political) spaces, transformation can occur as power dynamics and institutions are brought into question. As a result, not only the process but the very content of policy can be contested and rearticulated.

==Illustrations of approaches==

Democratic innovation approaches share a common methodology characterised by recognition in which particular segments of society take on new roles and are engaged in decision- or policy-making processes or forums that are traditionally predominated by others, such as experts (or adults). It is this aspect that makes them particularly innovative. Below are some examples of implemented approaches based on three different projects.

CITI-SENSE developed “citizens’ observatories” to engage citizens in environmental monitoring and information gathering through Earth Observation applications. Citizens engaged in science for the purposes of addressing sustainability issues is an innovative approach that circumvents that idea that science is strictly the realm of experts. It recognizes that laypersons can also contribute in the process of garnering important knowledge as part of the process of making decisions and policies. Citizens’ observatories” (COs) were employed in the project CITISENSE to empower citizens to contribute to and participate in environmental governance, to enable them to support and influence community and societal priorities and associated decision making. In this process, a community-based environmental monitoring and information system using innovative and novel Earth Observation applications was developed, tested and demonstrated. In CITI-SENSE, citizens gathered air quality data through sensors that provided real-time information on air quality in Barcelona, Belgrade, Edinburgh, Haifa, Ljubljana, Oslo, Ostrava, Vienna. The data was subsequently made available through widgets and mobile phone applications allowing people to comment and further share information. While there were some challenges in the project associated with, for example, data privacy, ethical and security issues, and scientific standards such as quality and reliability, the CO approach could increase awareness about environmental risks at minimal cost. Key aspects were identified as follows: “Based upon the review of different ongoing COs and of CO-related programmes in the environmental domain, we have identified key elements and qualities which are essential for a CO programme: (i) Be a unique virtual place to gather and share data from a variety of sources: novel sensor-technologies, open environmental data from public and national sources, and personal per- ceptions and textual/graphical contribution; and (ii) Extract and make use of relevant citizens-related data and provide multimodal services for citizens, communities and authorities.” (See Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’ observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance. Environmental Health 2014 13:107, pp. 10.)

Recognizing the important role of young disadvantaged people in policymaking brings in new perspectives that promote equality and quality of life from the perspective of a formally excluded segment of society. The project SocIEtY developed innovative ways for specifically enhancing the participation of disadvantaged youth in policymaking. This project established a forum for allowing young people to articulate their concerns and needs regarding quality of life issues that could be shared with stakeholders, politicians and non-governmental entities. The project specifically, “explores how young people aged 15-24 live in different European countries today; and examines what can be done to create social and institutional opportunities which will better enable them to live the lives they have reason to value” (see http://www.society-youth.eu).

CITISPYCE, in a similar effort, also engaged disadvantaged and marginalized youth from major European cities in forums supported by socially innovative resources and technologies to assist policymakers across local, national and EU scales to address inequality.

==References==
<references />

http://www.society-youth.eu
http://www.citi-sense.eu
Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance.Environmental Health 2014 13:107.
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en
http://www.citispyce.eu
http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu
Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’ observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance. Environmental Health 2014 13:107, pp. 10.

[[Category: Clusters of approaches]]
[[Category: Approaches]]

Democratic innovation through recognition

2019-10-31T08:15:44Z

Tamara Steger: ua

Democratic innovation through recognition focuses on inclusivity in decision-making and policymaking processes. Diverse participants are convened in different and original ways in order to include multiple perspectives in urban sustainability efforts.

This page is part of an ongoing, open-ended online collaborative database, which collects relevant approaches that can be used by city-makers to tackle unsustainability and injustice in cities. It is based mainly on knowledge generated in EU-funded projects and touches on fast changing fields. As such, this page makes no claims of authoritative completeness and welcomes your suggestions.

==General introduction of approach==
Democratic innovation through recognition builds inclusivity in decision- and policy-making in the promotion of equality and justice in urban sustainability. It does so mainly in two ways: procedurally and methodologically with implications for equality. By directly engaging citizens in city budgeting processes (“participatory budgeting”) and in generating scientific knowledge (“civic science”), for example, diverse perspectives and experiences are drawn in from the start. An important aspect of democratic innovation, therefore, is recognition. In this context, roles traditionally assigned to experts and/or technocrats are transferred to citizens and diverse community members. Participatory and action research methodologies are often embedded in the approaches to democratic innovation that also invite citizens themselves to design and conduct meaningful research with the aim of improving the lives of subordinated or historically excluded groups (e.g., SocIEtY, CITISPYCE), as well as confronting and transforming existing power dynamics (e.g., TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY). For example, the approaches taken in SocIEtY and CITISPYCE projects draw important attention to garnering and integrating youth perspectives more in related political processes through forums of engagement that feed into the policymaking process. In this context, new perspectives emerge by tackling different issues ranging from restorative justice (ALTERNATIVE) to air quality (CITI-SENSE).

==Shapes, sizes and applications==
Democrative innovative approaches establish diverse participatory forums predominantly applied at a small scale in multiple settings. While some approaches (see TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY and ALTERNATIVE projects) are geared toward managing conflict and tensions inherent in democratic contexts, others emphasize procedural inclusivity with practical implications for establishing goals or agenda setting (e.g, URBANSELF), generating knowledge (e.g., CITI-SENSE), and producing various outcomes such as budgetary plans for a local municipality (TRANSIT). The strength of these approaches, based on the examined projects, is found in the inclusive practical applications whereby disadvantaged, subordinated, or excluded people have the opportunity to participate in meaningful forums. While some of the forums produce concrete outputs, others are more about establishing cooperative civic relationships and networks. In many cases, however, it is not clear how the various approaches and their contributions endure once the project comes to an end. In some cases, experienced facilitators or conciliators are needed for transferability, particularly in the approaches that are directly focused on transforming conflict and power dynamics.

==Relation to UrbanA themes: Urban, sustainability, and justice==
Small community contexts or large convenings of a particular group (e.g., youth) generally provide the platforms for exploring and testing democratic innovation. Hence, in urban contexts, the approaches may be considered a good fit for neighborhood-size processes/projects or for larger city-wide efforts depending on the approach. These approaches to democratic innovation address justice in different ways, but particularly touch upon procedural justice with potential implications for distributive justice (i.e., who gets what and why). Democratic innovation promotes recognition by working with subordinated groups or challenging power dynamics through recognition in a way that either directly impacts sustainability, as in the case of Citizen Observations (COs) - also known as civic science - or creates potential for more democratic sustainability measures by generating experiences that build on civic capacities and expectations.

==Narrative of change==
It is well known that policymaking tends to be driven by powerful special interests. Democratic innovation creates openings in the dynamics of policy-making that is often driven by special interests and lobbies and, as a result, tends to exclude certain social groups. Through a bundle of approaches that fall under the democratic innovation umbrella, formerly excluded perspectives and contributions can emerge and directly impact decision- and policy-making. The expectation, and proven potential of these approaches, is that through shifting the power dynamics that sustain exclusionary mechanisms within democratic polities, more just social outcomes will be achieved that will also help advance urban sustainability.

==Transformative potential==
The different approaches covered here each have an inherent aspect that builds the potential for change. They do this in several ways: 1) making inclusivity central to governance approaches 2) opening procedural opportunities in participatory processes and 3) engagement in a common endeavor that is about life satisfaction and quality, and 4) dealing with conflict/tensions or power dynamics. In particular, the TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY project directly addresses power dynamics in which “differences and misunderstandings can be a springboard for more inclusive and effective decision making.” By opening up these opportunities and (political) spaces, transformation can occur as power dynamics and institutions are brought into question. As a result, not only the process but the very content of policy can be contested and rearticulated.

==Illustrations of approaches==

Democratic innovation approaches share a common methodology characterised by recognition in which particular segments of society take on new roles and are engaged in decision- or policy-making processes or forums that are traditionally predominated by others, such as experts (or adults). It is this aspect that makes them particularly innovative. Below are some examples of implemented approaches based on three different projects.

CITI-SENSE developed “citizens’ observatories” to engage citizens in environmental monitoring and information gathering through Earth Observation applications. Citizens engaged in science for the purposes of addressing sustainability issues is an innovative approach that circumvents that idea that science is strictly the realm of experts. It recognizes that laypersons can also contribute in the process of garnering important knowledge as part of the process of making decisions and policies. Citizens’ observatories” (COs) were employed in the project CITISENSE to empower citizens to contribute to and participate in environmental governance, to enable them to support and influence community and societal priorities and associated decision making. In this process, a community-based environmental monitoring and information system using innovative and novel Earth Observation applications was developed, tested and demonstrated. In CITI-SENSE, citizens gathered air quality data through sensors that provided real-time information on air quality in Barcelona, Belgrade, Edinburgh, Haifa, Ljubljana, Oslo, Ostrava, Vienna. The data was subsequently made available through widgets and mobile phone applications allowing people to comment and further share information. While there were some challenges in the project associated with, for example, data privacy, ethical and security issues, and scientific standards such as quality and reliability, the CO approach could increase awareness about environmental risks at minimal cost. Key aspects were identified as follows: “Based upon the review of different ongoing COs and of CO-related programmes in the environmental domain, we have identified key elements and qualities which are essential for a CO programme: (i) Be a unique virtual place to gather and share data from a variety of sources: novel sensor-technologies, open environmental data from public and national sources, and personal per- ceptions and textual/graphical contribution; and (ii) Extract and make use of relevant citizens-related data and provide multimodal services for citizens, communities and authorities.” (See Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’ observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance. Environmental Health 2014 13:107, pp. 10.)

Recognizing the important role of young disadvantaged people in policymaking brings in new perspectives that promote equality and quality of life from the perspective of a formally excluded segment of society. The project SocIEtY developed innovative ways for specifically enhancing the participation of disadvantaged youth in policymaking. This project established a forum for allowing young people to articulate their concerns and needs regarding quality of life issues that could be shared with stakeholders, politicians and non-governmental entities. The project specifically, “explores how young people aged 15-24 live in different European countries today; and examines what can be done to create social and institutional opportunities which will better enable them to live the lives they have reason to value” (see http://www.society-youth.eu).

CITISPYCE, in a similar effort, also engaged disadvantaged and marginalized youth from major European cities in forums supported by socially innovative resources and technologies to assist policymakers across local, national and EU scales to address inequality.

==References==
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http://www.society-youth.eu
http://www.citi-sense.eu
Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance.Environmental Health 2014 13:107.
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en
http://www.citispyce.eu
http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu
Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’ observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance. Environmental Health 2014 13:107, pp. 10.

[[Category: Clusters of approaches]]
[[Category: Approaches]]