Abstract
In urban transformation, no solution works without citizen support. With increasing numbers of building technologies and large-scale urban development on its way across cities, it has become vital to keep citizens informed, engaged, and content with the new changes. This paper looks at citizen engagement in Espoo (Finland) and Leipzig (Germany), and it determines whether the cities are ready for developing and implementing positive energy districts (PEDs). The authors studied the cities’ operations and current citizen engagement methods to understand how the efforts could be combined and improved. The analysis indicated that the city of Espoo already has a well-established system that continuously promotes citizen engagement at various levels, and combining the available infrastructure with company experts on citizen participation will allow Espoo to seamlessly transition towards PEDs in the near future. The city of Leipzig has a rich experience due to several national projects and participation in an earlier European project, which enabled the city to set clearer goals for the future and modify existing citizen methods. As lighthouse cities, findings from Espoo and Leipzig are also aimed at cities across Europe and beyond to boost development of PEDs together with citizens.
Highlights
This paper looks at citizen engagement in Espoo (Finland) and Leipzig (Germany), and it determines whether the cities are ready for developing and implementing positive energy districts (PEDs)
The analysis indicated that the city of Espoo already has a well-established system that continuously promotes citizen engagement at various levels, and combining the available infrastructure with company experts on citizen participation will allow Espoo to seamlessly transition towards PEDs in the near future
Success with a PED requires that all stakeholders join forces to develop the best-fit solution for and by the citizens to tackle the global climate crisis
Summary
Citizen engagement is collectively defined as public participation, stakeholder involvement, co-creation, civic engagement, participatory democracy, or activism [1]. It is described as individual or collective behavior that focuses on determining the social problems of a community [2,3,4]. Citizen engagement requires an active intentional dialogue between citizens and public decision makers [6]. Bringing citizen voices into planning, decision-making, implementation, or evaluation processes requires two-way communication. The EU Joint Research Centre leads a community of practice (CoP) on citizen engagement having plans for a manual and online resource catalog aimed at organizations and project needs while continuing an annual Festival of Citizen Engagement. The Citizen Focus Action Cluster at the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities (EIP-SCC) congregates several initiatives and actions on citizen engagement and operates as a mutual learning and matchmaking platform [9]
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