Pilot projects that promote inclusive and interactive sustainability work in cities
City of Espoo. The Future Workshop for Sustainable Development (TUPA). EUR 74,760.
The Future Workshop for Sustainable Development (TUPA) project strengthens the resident-based approach and their inclusion in the City of Espoo's programme work. The project develops and pilots a new model of resident inclusion, in which a number of residents from different backgrounds are given an opportunity to contribute to the achievement of the city's climate and sustainability objectives in future workshops. The workshops use creative working methods. The future workshops bring the complex elements of Espoo's sustainable development work closer to the residents' everyday lives and help to communicate about the work in a resident-oriented manner. The coaching provided in the project makes cities more competent users of creative methods of inclusion. The objective of the project is to better integrate the voice of residents into the sustainable development work done by Espoo and to help examine the goals more from the residents' perspective. This promotes social sustainability as part of the green transition and boosts Espoo's goal of being a pioneer in sustainable development in collaboration with the residents.
City of Hämeenlinna. Urban living room in Hämeensaari. EUR 49,500.
The urban living room is an environment in which culture, leisure time and services, as well as nature come together as an entity that activates residents and supports their well-being. The aim is to find a mindset shared by municipal actors, organisations and companies that will catalyse collaboration and concrete event production in the area of Hämeensaari, which has been underused for a long time, and to enhance understanding of the needs of special groups. The urban living room also serves as a platform for pop-up events. The coronavirus ‘paralysis’ has made people stay at home and isolate themselves; the urban living room creates a framework for promoting activity and inclusion. The pilot furthers the objectives of Hämeenlinna's carbon neutrality programme by providing information, encouragement for adopting a sustainable lifestyle and a platform for activities.
City of Jyväskylä. REDI(4)2030 = Digital portal for resource wisdom work of the City of Jyväskylä – strengthening information-based management and communication on a shared journey towards a carbon-neutral city in 2030. EUR 45,600.
The project will build a digital collaboration platform for the cross-administrative resource wisdom work of the City of Jyväskylä, or a digital portal. It will be used for developing and improving the management, transparency, accessibility and visualisation of data used for monitoring and managing resource wisdom work by making them more systematic. Increasingly open, accessible and refined information serves the city's resource wisdom planning and decision-making as well as other needs of information-based management. The portal also aims to improve the visibility of resource wisdom work both internally and outside the organisation. In addition, a scenario analysis of the city's carbon neutrality target for 2030 will be prepared, which together with the Resource-wise Jyväskylä 2040 programme will serve as one of the frameworks for the portal's content.
City of Järvenpää. Eco-socially sustainable event production model. EUR 75,000.
It is important for municipalities to support and develop event production from the grassroots level with a view to the local community, image and regional economy. As the number of experiential elements in events increases, it is also important to respond to eco-social challenges without crippling the flow of ideas, the joy of doing things and smooth event production. Järvenpää responds to this by generating eco-social awareness, through which it is possible to freely build mental, social and cultural capital, while putting limits on material consumption. The project brings together various actors and uses pilot events to create a model that supports systemic thinking for producing ecologically, socially and economically sustainable events in Järvenpää. The model works in parallel with the resource wisdom action plan introduced in Järvenpää and the Ympäristövahti monitoring tool connected to it.
City of Kouvola. Making the sustainable development operating model part of the residents' everyday life with the help of regional committees. EUR 75,000.
The regional committees of Kouvola serve as a link between residents, companies, organisations, educational institutions, city authorities and other parties involved. The committees can bring the sustainability perspective to people's everyday lives in a practical manner. The project brainstorms and tries out different ways of promoting sustainable modes of operation by which to increase biodiversity in local nature. Residential areas and their immediate environment provide opportunities for increasing biodiversity, as they do not have similar profit targets as lands used for production purposes. Preventing biodiversity loss in one's own immediate surroundings is meaningful action that residents can carry out as a community or on their own yard only. It is suited as locally organised communal action. It needs to be supported by information on the degradation of nature, its impacts and obstacles. The project will create an operating model for sustainable development to be used in Kouvola's regional activities.
City of Kuhmo. Full life in Kuhmo – Sustainable development through everyday actions. EUR 44,958.
The pilot aims to develop interactive and participatory work that enhances sustainability. The implementation of a common urban strategy requires resident-driven action and activation to engage all actors in promoting sustainable development and achieving the relevant targets. The purpose of the project is to produce new information and operating models, especially for the needs of municipalities with less than 10,000 inhabitants. The project develops a sustainable development agreement model with local operators and integrates sustainable development work into statutory welfare and security planning. In addition, it tests the use of drama techniques in the inclusion work of sustainable development, trains actors within the organisation, and makes culture an integral part of both the experience of inclusion and communication about sustainable development.
City of Lahti. Sustainable inclusion in Lahti. EUR 75,000.
Lahti is the European Green Capital 2021, and one of the four main themes of the theme year is inclusion. Lahti already does versatile inclusion work, but overall management of inclusion requires new tools. The project will continue and strengthen the inclusion work launched during the theme year and create and pilot an operating model for interactive sustainability work. The project will test the Skididialogi method, a dialogical method adapted for children and young people from the Timeout dialogue model, from the perspective of the circular economy. It will also build its own mode of operation for regional partnership tables, focusing on interactive sustainability work. During the project, the methods and objectives of inclusion applied by Lahti will be compiled into an inclusion map, and a workbook describing the inclusion model will be prepared. Other municipalities may utilise the inclusion map and workbook either in part or in full. The model can be scaled for the needs of both smaller and larger municipalities.
City of Lappeenranta. Awfully wonderful! – Making sustainable actions visible by means of environmental art. EUR 75,000.
The project “Awfully wonderful! – Making sustainable actions visible by means of environmental art” of the Lappeenranta urban planning division, in collaboration with various other actors, makes the city's versatile work for sustainable development visible through environmental and urban art implemented in the city environment. The project offers residents an opportunity to participate in making, brainstorming and commenting on works of art, and to reflect on their own relationship with the environment. At the same time, the residents will be challenged to bring up new development targets the city could join and thus boost the actions it takes for the environment. Another aim is to create novel operating models between the City of Lappeenranta and its various sectors, as well as between third-sector actors and actors providing basic education in visual arts and vocational arts education in the city.
City of Nurmes. Urban planning and culture divisions building a (joint) model of smart and socially sustainable resident inclusion. EUR 75,000.
The project will create a model for socially sustainable and smart urban planning, based on the use of libraries as places of interaction. This would establish a new kind of link between cultural services and urban planning. Particular attention will be paid to the methods of hybrid participation and the use of resident information across sectoral boundaries in municipalities. The challenge faced by the municipalities participating in the project is either that the practices of participatory planning are as yet under development (Nurmes and Siuntio) or that no sufficient diversity is achieved in participation (Espoo). The model gives participants a vantage point to topical discussion on urban planning and expands their possibilities to influence their own future in their residential area. The project will expand the palette of participation in accordance with the Land Use and Building Act (MRL) and open discussion on which sustainability issues are of key importance locally and how they could be solved by means of urban planning.
City of Tampere. KELI – Promoting more sustainable mobility with the help of a carbon footprint calculator. EUR 75,000.
Reducing emissions from mobility is a significant challenge in achieving climate targets. Carbon footprint calculators help by steering people to change their behaviour. The City of Tampere has developed and published a free carbon footprint calculator for mobility in its city application. In the KELI (Promoting more sustainable mobility with the help of a carbon footprint calculator) project, we use the carbon footprint calculator to study how messages alerting to health impacts steer mobility behaviour. The project produces research information on how residents can be encouraged to use sustainable means of mobility. In the project, we activate residents to move more sustainably and participate in the implementation of the city's climate targets, implement the city's strategy and develop the technical implementation of the calculator using open source code.
City of Vaasa. Vaasa with energetic residents – Invånarenergisk Vasa. EUR 33,000.
The title and point of the City of Vaasa's strategy is “Nordic Energy Capital – energy for a good life". The project will form a shared view of how residents are linked to the city's most important strategic theme through concrete measures for sustainable development. The Invånarenergisk Vasa project operationalises and strengthens the multi-vocal resident interpretation of the energy capital. Among other things, the project implements the wishes and steps for more sustainable urban living that have emerged through residential proposals in Vaasa's participatory budgeting and in various workshops for residents. In addition, the project also utilises the good practices learned from the residential actions implemented in the EU Green Capital cities. The project is implemented across administrative sectors, by learning from others and by co-creating with residents and organisations. Socially sustainable development is supported by taking into account the involvement of vulnerable resident groups and, for example, linguistic accessibility (multilingualism).
City of Vantaa. Skills and participation – Engaging children and young people in building a more sustainable food culture. EUR 75,000.
Vantaa has been making long-term efforts to develop inclusion and environmental responsibility as regards meal services in its day-care centres, schools and educational institutions. Still, the percentage of meals taken remains too low, and the climate responsibility of meal services should be increased. The objectives of the project are to increase the percentage of meals taken, to reduce the carbon footprint of catering services and to teach the principles of a sustainable lifestyle to children and young people. To promote these goals, the project will create a new kind of operating model for strengthening the strategic development and inclusion of meal services and prepare new educational materials based on existing practices. In addition, tasty recipes will be developed based on the views of children and young people. The project continues the co-creation project of environmental responsibility and inclusion of meal services initiated by young people. The concepts and materials to be created will be shared with other municipalities.