Good outcomes come from involving everyone

How are people involved in shaping urban environments? Do you use a "consultation approach" or do you have the resources to take a flexible "people first" approach by going to where people gather and capturing the views of many? 

Meaningful involvement requires municipal authorities and state / national / federal government to have a people-first mindset to involve businesses and industry, citizens of all ages and a range of supporting groups. Good governance to oversee this approach is vital, as promoted by SDG 16.

Ask yourself - are you following a genuinely people-first approach to meaningfully involve everyone in your local area in developing policy, plans and actions to work towards an urban Vision? 

From Amsterdam to Zanjan, the people who oversee cities and towns are working out how citizens and businesses can help make good sustainable development happen. 

Some thoughts and ideas:

1. How do you engage with the people in your city or town? Do you publish and share information and plans about changes to the areas you oversee, and if so how do you do it? Do you publish documents on website(s), put notices on lampposts and assume that citizens will look at them? 
2. It can help to start with a blank sheet of paper from time to time. Ask the community for their views - they are the experts. Listen to them first (if you can gain enough views) before you start designing anything new. Once you gain their views and ideas you can develop technical means to address these points, then you can hold feedback reviews.
3. Think about sharing draft plans in feedback reviews in an interactive way. Don't just publish them on a website - that is not good engagement. Can you meet with many people in a smart way to get their feedback (for example, in popular places where people meet, learn or socialise and maybe also in an Urban Future Centre). Use interactive and vibrant posters, boards and videos to spark discussions and ideas.
4. What opportunities exist to ensure the private sector is involved in a meaningful way?
5. Can you show how your plans link to the global effort to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? Can you show people how industries and trade impact us all - from cement to plastics production and food management - and what your local area is doing to be resilient and sustainable?
6. The future belongs to young people. Can children at school and students at college and university be inspired to think of creative solutions to urban sustainability and resilience challenges, aided by business people and yourselves as municipal authorities acting as advisors to their projects?  

Some thoughts and ideas to involve everyone in discussions and decision-making: 

1. How do you involve people today? Whilst recognising that it takes time and effort, you should go to the places where they gather - which means to schools, colleges and universities to meet with children and young adults, community centres where people socialise and to the areas where people live (across the area that you oversee).
2. How often do you hold engagement sessions with people? You should be doing so on a continual basis, with all age groups, and tracking this.
3. Do you have the capacity, space and budget to create Urban Future Centres that people can walk into at any time, and also attend regular urban forums and discussions? Perhaps they could be "movable centres" that use vacant space in unoccupied buildings in your city / town centre.
4. Can you set up "pop up" kiosks in town / community squares and plazas on weekends, with information posters and videos to support interactive sessions with locals? Maybe this can be an efficient way to gather many views and ideas.

Some thoughts and ideas to involve everyone in discussions and decision-making: 

1. Almost everyone uses apps nowadays as part of their daily life - yet most of us don't use apps to engage with our city and municipal authorities. Can authorities provide good apps to engage with citizens and businesses? If not, how could you make them work? 
2. Are you working on providing one or more apps to engage with your communities and businesses (such as the Urban 2.0 app idea)? It's not simply a case of publishing an app - introducing an app as a service requires the organisational structure to be in place to support its use. It requires being more agile as an organisation. Plus, you can use an app to monitor progress of implementing your plans.

Some thoughts and ideas to involve everyone in how to create and maintain healthy and happy urban places: 

1. How can you encourage healthy eating? 
2. What will encourage people to be physically active on a regular basis? 
3. How can social spaces work for everyone, from a young child to a senior citizen?

Some thoughts and ideas to involve everyone in discussions and decision-making: 

1. How can you introduce much more greenery in your placemaking strategy and plan, including making it a requirement of planning permission for new developments to have a minimum percentage of greenery? 
2. How can you discuss with your community appropriate ideas for water areas?
3. For inclusive urban design, what plans do you have to cater for people who have different restrictions (such as blindness, physical disability and others)?
4. Can you push forward the design of buildings using circular economy principles (which are also more resilient to climate change), and ask the construction industry to show more innovation? Can you learn from others (plenty of examples exist)?
5. Carbon emissions need to be drastically lowered, in line with SDG 13. Air and noise pollution needs to come down.
6. For housing, should you be pushing builders to have accreditation to the world-leading Passivhaus standard or a similar type of standard?
7. Are you measuring and improving air and noise quality in your area, as part of your key indicators?
8. Are you doing enough to tackle homelessness, as part of your key indicators?

Some thoughts and ideas to involve everyone in discussions and decision-making: 

1. Can you change the transport & mobility system in your area, given budget constraints and resistance to change? 
2. Are you ensuring your urban areas are designed "for time", so that the core things people need are close by without needing a car? 
3. Reducing private car use won't be popular with everyone, which is why holding engagement sessions to explain why it needs to be done, and working out business cases for change, are vital. 
4. Focusing on active and inclusive mobility, with walkability for those who can walk is key.
5. What is your plan for a fully integrated and complete cycling network (with bikes being given priority at crossings)? Can developers of new housing developers ensure that they properly contribute towards properly integrated cycle lane networks, not just do the bare minimum to the roads close to their developments?
6. Better public transport is key. This could take the shape of much better (electric-powered) bus networks involving different sizes of buses for different times of the day. 
7. Are you looking at new forms of good quality and regular public transport that suit your context, such as better bus services or perhaps light rail or trams? Are you being open enough to all ideas to help to reduce car use?

Some thoughts and ideas to involve everyone in discussions and decision-making: 

1. What can you do to improve the use of green energy? Is there anything you can specifically do locally to set up renewable energy sources in line with SDG 7? Could solar panels be more widespread? Are wind energy projects feasible? For an urban case study on energy management, cities and towns can review The EnergyLab Nordhavn project, which ran between 2015 and 2019 and showcases different energy solutions. 
2. A citywide “energy data warehouse” can collect real-time data on renewable energy production, weather, energy costs, and how resources are being consumed at any given moment. This could link to agreed key indicators to monitor.
3. Do you have a Water Management Plan including specific strategies to restore natural water points in line with SDG 6? 

Some thoughts and ideas to involve everyone in discussions and decision-making: 

1. Are you inspiring, supporting and incentivising in an appropriate way citizens and businesses to adopt good circular economy practices for all resources and to responsibly consume all goods, products and services including energy, water, fuel, food, technology, textiles, building materials and others? 
2. Waste management is a core part of what you do. What is in your Waste Strategy, and have you sought public views on it? Are there any opportunities to rethink your approach, and not simply have waste / garbage bins on your streets?
3. As you seek to improve your built environment and to reshape the socio-economic environment, is a recalibration of retail required? Will more independent retail help to make urban environments more pleasurable to experience? Have you asked your citizens what should their "High Street" look like?
4. Are you thinking about art and history and how to learn from and use it to support good placemaking? Have you asked your citizens for their views?

Some thoughts and ideas to involve everyone in discussions and decision-making: 

1. How do you measure value? Are you changing from using the out-of-date measure of GDP?
2. What sources of green finance are you aiming to / do you already secure? 
3. Some cities are asking citizens to help shape their budget allocation, with a percentage of budget spend being for “participatory budgeting”. Is this something you could consider?
4. Could a common fund – such as a pre-distribution fund – in which all citizens contribute a small portion for the social and environmental good of the area, be feasible for cities and towns, working with governments (as an additional revenue stream alongside traditional taxation policies)? 
5. Are you measuring the value of nature in your measurement of economic progress? If not, when will you start doing so? Look at the principles of Mission-orientated innovation for insights and ideas.
6. For example, should a private housing developer, which sets out to achieve profits through building and selling homes, commit to helping their developments be better connected to new forms of public transport rather than simply creating more roads for more car use? If so, how will value be recognised for these efforts? 
7. Can new forms of digital currencies assist cities and towns? Could such currencies be linked to an app, with rewards in this currency being generated for confirmation of positive actions by citizens and businesses which allows them to be able to use these rewards in a beneficial way?
8. Is there scope for a “city / town wellbeing plan” that authorities can agree with various stakeholder groups? Could such a plan, for example, include in the budget plan the provision for their citizens of one day’s free travel each month (using public transport) around their city or town so that they can explore other neighbourhoods?

Some thoughts and ideas to involve everyone in discussions and decision-making: 

1. Do you have a climate adaptation and mitigation strategy for your city / town / local area? If not, when will you have one, and how do you involve citizens, businesses and academia on it? 
2. Is a carbon levy feasible, if it can be made to work in a positive way?
3. Do you have a disaster resilience strategy for your city / town / local area, which has citizen and business input and involvement? How do you involve citizens, businesses and academia in it for their input?
4. Do you discuss and share examples of lessons learned from cities and towns around the world that have avoided disasters because of sensible proactive action, and can you learn from them?

Some thoughts and ideas to involve everyone in discussions and decision-making: 

1. Being smart is not just about creating "digital twins" and using the latest technology, although some of these aspects may be of value. It's about agreeing practical smart solutions, some of which can be low-tech.
2. Do you have a Smart City / Town strategy that has been developed with citizen and business input? If not, when will you have one, and how will you involve citizens, businesses and academia to help shape it?
3. Personal data protection and the best cybersecurity needs to built into the foundation of all smart city / town plans.

The plans and objectives of virtually all businesses in all sectors are impacted by the urban environments that they work in and serve. Understanding your impact on urban environments can help you understand how you can play your part towards urban resilience. 

By understanding your impact on urban environments, and how your objectives influence urban resilience, you help your organisation’s resilience and business continuity, and in turn you help the local communities where you operate. This includes how extreme weather events are dealt with by urban areas, transportation challenges, cyber threats, and how public health threats such as a pandemic are responded to.

This includes ensuring that you have a good Business Continuity Plan (BCP) that includes how you can support urban environments where you operate whilst of course focusing on your business continuity and resilience.

Are you part of MCR 2030 and / or the ARISE network, and if so are you sharing your BCP/BCPs? If not, would you consider joining, and doing so?

You might even be able to think about how you can support global frameworks such as the SDGs and the Sendai Framework.

For the urban environments you are associated with, do you know what the people who run and manage them are working on and planning to ensure sustainability and resilience, and can you play a part to achieving their goals whilst working towards your own?  

Are you linked into the resilience strategy for the cities / towns / local areas where you have a presence (one or several)? If not, how can you get involved?

Understand sectoral interlinkages. For example, if you work in the finance sector, what impact do your investments have on urban environments? If your organisation is an infrastructure or construction business, are you developing sustainable financing for urban design, or responsible materials use (for example, we must change our approach to concrete) and sustainable asset management? 

Work with your teams and eco-system partners to push the envelope for ambitious and achievable sustainability targets, and see which objectives contribute towards good urban resilience. This requires making the time to fully understand the urban areas you serve or operate in. 

Work with your teams and eco-system partners to push the envelope for ambitious and achievable sustainability targets, and see which objectives contribute towards good urban resilience. This requires making the time to fully understand the urban areas you serve or operate in. 

Can you help to create and maintain a good transport & mobility system in the urban areas where you operate? Reducing vehicle use isn't easy, yet working out business cases for change are vital. 

Can you support your employees with active travel such as cycling, and help them to make good use of public transport?

What can you do to change how your energy is sourced? Is there anything that you can specifically do locally, to set up renewable energy sources in line with SDG 7? Could the buildings of your roofs be used for solar panels? Can you fund wind energy projects? Can you contribute towards local energy grid schemes?

Do you have a business Water Management Plan, including strategies to restore natural water points in line with SDG 6? Some businesses are recycling water and saving on water usage - can you do likewise?

How can you work with municipal authorities where you operate to ensure good circular economy practices for all resources are in place? 

Are you aiming for zero waste and no landfill by reducing, re-using and recycling?

What is in your Waste Strategy? Are there any opportunities to completely rethink the approach, and to assist city / municipal authorities with their efforts?

Do you have a role to play in helping citizens to reduce waste?

How is value measured? Are you supporting new forms of business accounting which value nature?

What new sources of green finance are you aiming to secure? 

For example, should a private housing developer, which sets out to achieve profits through building and selling homes, commit to helping their developments be better connected to new forms of public transport (e.g. supporting regular EV shuttle buses into the urban centre) rather than simply creating roads for car use? If so, how will value be recognised for these efforts? 

Can you play a role in helping cities and towns with new forms of digital currencies which allows citizens to be able to use them in beneficial ways?

If you have wellbeing initiatives, are you able to support similar initiatives of cities and towns? 

What kind of business continuity planning do you have in place, and do you discuss this with your local business community and the city / municipal authorities?

Do you have a climate adaptation and resilience strategy for your business? If not, should you have one, and how will you engage authorities, citizens and academia about it? 

Do you support a change to tax schemes to reduce the reliance on fossil fuels?

Many examples of positive change are taking place around the world - often involving only small amounts of money. See if any of the examples you see are relevant to where you operate. Many of them are business-led - we can all make a difference if we try.