Citizen participation in climate smart urban development: Part 2

This report presents the fnal results of our engagement in the research project Climate-Smart Näsby. Our involvement from January to December 2022 was aimed to explore how the Municipality of Kristianstad (Sweden) engages with citizens in urban planning related initiatives and identify different forms of participation possibilities.

The results of such exploration led to the recognition of both the value and the diffculties of establishing fruitful forms of dialogue. One diffculty is engaging citizens at the early stages of an urban (re)building process, especially when sustainability concerns are at stake. In addition, it is diffcult to ensure that citizens remain anchored to the whole process, which usually takes a long time to be completed. The risk is that participation and dialogue remain fragmented over time, with different citizens being active in different stages of an urban planning process. This report presents a tentative model that facilitates the creation of platforms for site specifc active citizen dialogue (In Swedish: platsbunden aktiv opinions-bildning) to alleviate identifed diffculties. A selection of vignettes and photos, resulting from our feldwork and displayed in various exhibitions, is included in the report to give the reader a sense of the studied site (Näsby, Kristianstad) and the citizens living there.